I’ll be honest… I was pretty sure I’d written this article before now, but if Google can’t find it then I guess it doesn’t exist 🙂
Here’s the problem, you just learned a complete solo (or 2) and now you’re trying to improvise over a different jam track and you want to use some of your newly acquired soloing prowess…
And it ain’t working out.
Well, here’s the thing, while it is important to learn solos all the way through, it’s also important to break them apart into their individual phrases or licks.
Because those individual licks and phrases are what are going to likely be more useful down the road… you won’t likely find another song that’s exactly like the solo you just learned. You’ll probably need to make some modifications and that requires knowing it in pieces.
So first, you need to know 3 things about the lick:
- What beat it starts on – you don’t necessarily have to play it the same way, but you should know because that has the best chance of success
- What beat it ends on – many licks end on a certain beat because of a chord change that will be going on. This is part of the phrasing of the lick and of the utmost importance along with when the lick starts.
- What chord changes (if any) are going on behind the lick – is it used over the I chord? Does it migrate from the I to the IV or from the V to the I? This gives you the purpose of the lick and tells you more about what it actually does for the solo as a whole.
(One other thing, I believe you should be able to count through the lick out loud so you know what beat each note falls on. If you aren’t sure, test yourself by turning on a metronome and playing the lick to the beat without a backing track. If you can count yourself in, start on the right beat and end on the right beat without counting then you’re good to go. Otherwise, do some counting.)
So now that you have the lick under your fingers and you know when all the notes are supposed to go it’s time to work with it for a while…
Now I have a “3 Gig Rule,” but for you that may be a “3 Practice Session Rule,” if you’re not playing out with a group.
Session 1: Turn on a jam track similar in feel and key to the solo you learned the lick from. Do your best to play that lick, and only that lick, all over the track. Really experiment with it over all chords and maybe different starting points to see if it handles changes well. Then try some other tracks in different keys and different feels but stick with that same lick
For me, session 1 is gig 1. I try to use the lick in just about every song we play throughout the night. Most of the time, it doesn’t go so good but I usually get a few good ones towards the end.
Session 2: Continue to play with it over various jam tracks in various feels and keys. For me, on the 2nd night I’ll be about 50/50… about half the time it will sound good. But again, by the end I should be hitting a lot more.
Session 3: At this point you’re pretty comfortable with the lick and you can now combine it with other ideas you already know and it should be sounding pretty good 9/10 times or even 10/10 if you’ve really got it. On the 3rd gig for me I hit it pretty much every time by the end of the gig.
Notice that this is 3 days with 1 lick!
This is super important as I am NOT trying to learn 3 or 4 or 5 licks at once. That never works out well for anyone I’ve seen.
But remember this, while you’ve learned 1 lick really well in 3 days, think of where you’ll be in a month approaching it like that… and think about where you were a month ago, have you made that much progress in the last 30 days?
53 replies to "The 3 Gig Rule"
If 1+1=2 and 2+1=3 what does 4 equal? No.. it’s just a da#n 4..
Just started working on 50 rock licks by the box. It seems like it’s organized so you can play the Amin licks as is, without making changes to account for the changing chords when they occur in the backing tracks. I’m curious if I have that right – I intended to learn the licks using the process Griff is describing in this message.
Good stuff, Griff. I once broke down both solos from “Sultans of Swing” into their component parts and practiced each separate lick at a much slower speed. Mark Knopfler rocks the Blues!
Great advice Griff, I’m going to try that suggestion. I’ve managed to learn 4 of the 5 easy blues solo’s and I’m looking forward to trying to play those over different jam tracks. Thanks for the suggestion .
Alexander.
I recently found out that Mark Knopfler, lead singer and lead guitarist for Dire Straights and his own solo songs doesn’t use a pick, just fingers. No wonder he can play speedy licks.
I’m glad it sounds like I’ve been doing the right thing with the getting a kick running fairly smooth before linking on the next lick. The old saying from military sgt was the only way to eat an elephant is one bit at a time lol. Blues unleashed was my first guitar DVD lesson pack I owned and gig in a box and few others over time. With my veterans pension and my injuries and broken brain lol. Guitar and my camera is all I have left to keep my head in check with my PTSD. Music has always been a big part of my life. Cheers from Australia.
Matt
Roger that, Matt! Keep at it with your camera and guitar. Both are really good at filling your head with good stuff and crowding out the junk. Been there. Still there. Let’s keep doing the good stuff!
Jan
I believe that you sent this out in August of 2018. I always enjoy your lessons. You have moved my playing along and for that I will always be grateful.
DITO !! CAN’T BELIEVE HOW TIME FLY’S.’ BEEN WITH GRIFF, SINCE 2015
Thanks will try it
Will definitely try it. Thanks.
That was interesting. I got my finger out of a brace that was on almost 4 months so I had no caluses to play but now it is rehab as I start out with scales to get back into it. I have gotten your strumming and mastery course that I have wanted for years so this will go great with it. Great lesson….
Hey Griff, I have never practiced this way. I’ve just been trying to use as many licks as I can remember when I’m playing with a jam track. I’m going to try this, everything else you say works, thanks for this.
This message has helped me immensely. Practicing just one lick over the 12 bar progression and at different tempos and feels has made a big impact on my playing. I now feel like I know where the lick belongs and feel confident that I know which beat I am on after practicing in this manner. Thanks again.
So true as I have noticed that I sometimes will get the sound of a different key when into the ZONE….
This makes a lot of sense, Griff. Thanks for the good advice.
U always have great advice Griff. Keep them coming bro 👍👍
Shure glad its u teachen griff
You are an amazing observer/detective of human behavior. Thanks for a very useful approach that is more likely to bear fruit than the shotgun method I’ve been using for umpteen decades. Thanks again. Bob
Good advice Griff. Thanks!
8/9/18
3 days or 3 practice sessions may not be enough. It may take longer than that, maybe a lot longer befor you really OWN that lick. But until you DO own it, you will stumble or fall on your face every time you try to use it in a jam situation.
Learning entire solos is well and good … if you’re in a cover band, but nearly useless otherwise. Learning entire songs/solos is good for newbies to learn how songs go together, work on timing, etc. But if one doesn’t know/realize that those solos are nothing but a collection of LICKS and isn’t paying attention to how those LICKS go tegether, my contention is that one does NOT know how the song goes together even if it is memorized note for note.
Good observation/advice.
Yes, Jim, well said.
Hey Griff,
All good to know.
I am saving this in my learning notes for BGU Course.
Thanks
Michael-Sydney-Australia
As always Griff you hit it on the head. The main element of your way forward is practice, practice, and practice some more. Like so many others I fail sometimes to make adequate time to do just that. That is not an excuse that is just a reality when you consider others and their needs and try and meet their needs before your own. I am not a paragon of virtue hear I am saying that at times it is difficult to take / get the time to practice. My guitar playing, limited as it may be is seen as ‘playing’ in not a nice way – just that I am playing myself. This stems from the fact I married into the musical family I did. I have already outlined the obstacle(s) I come across with the superiority of their combined knowledge surpassing my own.
love your corse play houreverday
You’re going to find that you’re developing a personal “vocabulary” of licks. A vocabulary is a collection of words. It won’t do you a lot of good unless you know how to use those words to construct meaningful sentences. You might visualize a “sentence” as a lead over a whole 12-bar progression.
First is how to remember all the words. When I learn a new lick, I do just as Griff suggests; take note of WHERE in the progression it is played. At the beginning of the I chord? Transitioning from the I to the IV? Over the IV? Over the V? Part of the turn-around? Over the V after the turn-around? Furthermore, which BOX is it from?
I mentally compartmentalize my “vocabluary stash” by BOXES. Each BOX stash is further compartmentalized by the above.
And every new lick I learn, I then go to work INTEGRATING IT into my vocabulary. I start comping and trying that new lick in combination with every other lick that I already know. Finding out which other licks it works well with. And keep at that until I own it. Finding out how to use it to construct sentences. That might take two full weeks. The more licks you know, the longer that will take. There is no fast way to do this. If you expect to be able to just think it and automatically play it in a solo during a live jam, it has to be internalized that way. And if you can’t just think it and automatically play it, you’re going to “fall on your face” every time you try to use it. This “drill” also keeps you from FORGETTING licks that you learned months ago.
And no, it DOESN’T have to sound identical to the solo you swiped it from! Any lick can be used in a slow blues, a shuffle, jump blues, you name it. And virtually every possible “feel”. That means speeding it up, slowing it down, changing the emphasis of certain notes, etc., so no, it’s NOT always going to sound exactly like where you got it from.
The idea here is to learn LICKS … that you can use in ANY song … not SONGS or whole solos.
Jim, your post is one of the most cogent ways to approach accumulating & enhancing your own lick library. My fleeting memory is a real obstacle to retaining a lick for very long. Troublesome & frustrating in the extreme. I’ve more or less abandoned the learning the licks approach Griff uses in a lot of his courses. Now I focus on how these licks are superimposed over the charted chords & how to see & use the guiding tones to transition between what came before & where the next chord is going. Your way of mastering these short phrases is brilliant.
Great blog Griff, what I would like to see in your video’s at lease ones to show us to tune our guitar’s to yours, to have that same tune as we play or practice or follow your lesson’s, would that be possible or not or is that part of our practice and to learn? Anyway love the you teach and put together your way of music seen your video’s with your band and findly saw your wife playing her saxahone, my daugther and son are musician as well and I come from a long family of musician like your self, so thank’s for everything keep up the good music going.
Awesome lesson Griff!! Im going to try what you said!! Thanks Paul-
IN MY 40 YEARS OF PLAYING I ALWAYS HAD TO LEARN ALL THE CORDS AND THE SONG AND BE ABLE TO SING IT WHILE PLAYING RTYHM GUITAR. AFTER I HAVE MEMORIZED IT, THEN I KNOW WHERE THE LICKS WILL FALL IN AND WHEN TO SOLO. IF YOU DONT KNOW THE WHOLE SONG, YOUR JUST STRUGLING ALONG PICKING OUT NOTES AND TRYING TO LISTEN TO THE GUTAR PLAYER. LEARNING A SONG FOR ME IS LIKE BURNING IT INTO MY BRAIN. SO WHEN IT COMES FOR A FEW LICKS, THEY FALL IN BEAT AT THE RIGHT TIME IN THE SONG.
Hey thanks for sure. Working 11 hrs a day and with work at home things to do then practice. I just think if it takes that long for you I feel better about how I’m doing. There is a load of my mine. Lol.
I have always believed that if you are going to copy a solo lead from a song that you are going to play on stage that it should be, and sound as exact as possible to how it was originally done on the song. I have seen guitar players take a riff or two from that song and play them and virtually destroy liking the song because they didn’t make an effort to learn the solo as originally played. I have also seen guitar players take riffs from songs and use them as their solo material so much so that I knew what group and guitar player they got the riff from which I also find distasteful. Even if you have a lead solo down note for note on a song you want to do there is so many cases that you can’t make it sound like how it was done originally because the nuances of sound the guitarist creates you can’t copy. If I do copy a riff I will break it down, and try to stay within the structure of it, but change the emphasis of notes and timing so that it doesn’t sound like I copied it note for note, and yet keep the same emotional drive of that lead solo, so that it has the same dramatic start to finish. Not an easy task for sure.
There are some songs in which I can improvise around any licks, and there are songs that require note-for-note duplication. If I’m going to play licks over Pink Floyd songs I better be prepared to play each lick the same as David Guilmor laid down on the record. Guilmor plays the same licks in live shows as are played on the record. Some songs require note-for-note duplication of the solos just as the lyrics are sung.
good practice idea…thanks…later.
cowboy
This sounds like a brave and intuitive way to get a feel for how and where to use a lick, But what’s I’d love to see more of in your lessons, (and I own a lot of your videos which are GREAT) is some simple theory,
I started looking at how a simple minor pentatonic scale has target notes, the root, 5th, Flat 3rd with a curl, same with a flat 7th,
But when you go to a IV chord, your in a different harmonic territory, and rather than just a lick to toss in, I’d like to understand which notes , when you’re playing over a D chord in an A blues, work , Then you can really apply new licks, and start to make up your own,
I know you can still use the A root as a target note, though now its the 5th, or the D , as root of the IV, and the switch that happens between the flat 3rd and flat 7th on the IV, and I’m trying to figure out what other intervals are target tones and how to approach them over the IV and V and turnaround, Just a little theory goes a long way,
I’ve gotten some DVDs where the instructor mentions these intervals, but usually they seem to assume you know what’s going on, and yammer too quickly and and you never get the full picture
If when you introduce new licks etc, if you would talk about what target notes and intervals are involved each time, even for a few seconds, and how they morph when you hit the IV and V I would be grateful, cause other teachers just can’t seem to slow down like you do and explain thing,
And it so vital , Still, I like your 3 gig rule, but I’d also like to know how target tones evole through a blues, or blues lick when you show em, Thanks, Vic G
Whaaa ??? Seriously, this is the one topic that NOBODY ever answers, not Griff that I have seen, not anybody else. We’re not really talking about soloing here, but what to play over changes. When you’re moving from, say, I-IV-V (ex: A-D-E), you can’t just play in A-D-E over those changes. I get it.
So—-what the f’k DO we play? And why does every teacher ignore this issue, or gloss over it or seemingly assume we all know it? No single issue gets more ink in BGU comments than this one. If you don’t know where to go for notes to solo over changes, you don’t solo (as least in public), cuz you don’t dare. It’s that simple.
So if I do as Griff suggests, is there NO OTHER WAY to learn what to play over changes? As Vic suggests, it would seem that there are 2-3 notes, target notes if I understood Vic rightly, that will sound good over a chord, then likely some others that that will be usable, not grating.
Good guitar players are a dime a dozen, said an old friend, and he’s not far wrong in the age of guitar. If THEY have all figured this stuff out, then there is something that works. What is it?
Griff, Vic G has made a great point. Perhaps a complete set of lessons? At least a blog or 3. I would also love it if you focus on the transition licks/chords (& potential substitutions) & especially how the I, IV & V chords relate/overlap (eg. the 7th of one of the chords becomes the 3rd, 5th or whatever) of the other chords in the progression. I can’t keep them straight & world appreciate your making them understandable the way you do. My faulty memory makes me glacially slow to reconstruct the notes of one chord vs the others, let alone retain them for very long. I’ve yet to see a good explanation of how the similarities & differences between the chords in the progression & how to accentuate the single note differences & make them really relevant in a solo. I own a fair number of your courses, so if you’ve addressed this in one or more of them, I apologize for being so obtuse. (If you have, can you point me to which lesson & which specific part I should review?)
Griff, Vic G has made a great point. Perhaps a complete set of lessons? At least a blog or 3. I would also love it if you focus on the transition licks/chords (& potential substitutions) & especially how the I, IV & V chords relate/overlap (eg. the 7th of one of the chords becomes the 3rd, 5th or whatever) of the other chords in the progression. I can’t keep them straight & world appreciate your making them understandable the way you do. My faulty memory makes me happy glacially slow to reconstruct the notes of one chord vs the others, let alone retain them for very long. I’ve yet to see a good explanation of how the similarities & differences between the chords in the progression & how to accentuate the single note differences & make them really relevant in a solo. I own a fair number of your courses, so if you’ve addressed this in one or more of them, I apologize for being so obtuse. (If you have, can you point me to which lesson & which specific part I should review?)
Whoops. Sorry about the multiple posts. Couldn’t figure out how to delete them & really can’t figure out why it/they didn’t get posted under Vic G’s post. Damn my double vision.
Nonetheless, Vic G makes really important points that I’d love to see elucidated in your amazing teaching style. Bob S.
I am not a guitar player …. I have one but learning to play banjo and I look forward to all your posts and videos to see what guitar players are learning and what it looks like their playing the blues since I seem to have musicians around me who love the blues …. I learn so much from you and is applicable to my learning the banjo too … Today’s blog and the blogs abt soloing if I ever get brave enuf and fast enuf w/ some songs … Improv is still a mystery … and it’s so helpful to have you as a resource to work on things that sometimes don’t necessarily get expressed as well as you are able to and help break it down … Thank you very much
“The Parts All Matter”: Hmm. For a moment there I thought we were going to be talking about the Planned Parenthood scandal. But then this is about music so we can get back to the subject! 🙂
In one of the few places we get away from politics for awhile.
I’m pretty good at sitting down and woodshedding a lead – can even furrow my brow and write something by putting together different licks – but “thinking on my feet” in a jam is the step I was struggling with, and had a recent crash – veering into jazz while on stage! *grin* – so obviously first step was I needed more jam track practice…
Went to YouTube and searched for jam tracks in the key I was in – found all kinds of tempos and feels and then played along with all of them. Once my memorized lead part ran out, then just noodled to keep playing – sometimes paraphrasing little licks from the original lead to keep a sense of continuity.
Next step is I searched for alternate keys and then did the same thing – playing my canned lead and then noodling once it ran out.
Has been hugely beneficial at my stage of development – and looking forward to getting back on stage!
Kevin
Griff,
I do believe that you have mentioned the 3 gig/session rule before but it is definitely worthy of repeating.
Thanks for breaking it down again. This time a process. I’m going to steal that too.
I’ve been trying to get some of the style and sounds of a master player for some time but with not alot of success so I started watching some u tube performances of his and breaking things down to small bits and pieces and using a guitar that would alow me to get those sounds and I’ve made alot more progress great advice thanks Griff !!
Thanks Griff….. Makes me feel better, if it takes that much time for you to get a lick down, means there is hope for me.
Hi Griff,
I was trained as a classical pianist. I am a singer. In my heart, I am a musician. I know a couple of songs on guitar…the best one…Father and Son by Cat Stevens. In my mind, every day, I am an acoustic guitar super star on stage in Nashville, Tennessee! Lollollollol lollollol. You know who keeps that dream going? You Griff…you. 🙂 And my great imagination. Lol. Today, I will be a psychotherapist in private practice, and so on a daily basis, one of my dreams will ALWAYS be realized. I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you, for being such an amazing inspiration. ..now, and forever.
Sincerely,
Jenny
Thanks Griff
It’s like the song by Ringo Star! It doesn’t come easy! Long way to. Got & a big hill to climb. Hope I don’t get over whelmed!
Thanks Griff I really appreciate your incisive and timely comments. For me as a basic beginner all your comments are very helpful.
Thanks again Griff for all ur help!DH