{"id":6354,"date":"2014-09-09T05:44:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T05:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6354"},"modified":"2014-09-09T05:44:55","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T05:44:55","slug":"the-soloing-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/the-soloing-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soloing Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, yesterday’s post<\/a> certainly “struck a chord” it seemed \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

And that was the intent… to get you thinking a little and maybe wondering where to go from here… and I’m going to borrow someone’s comment from the BGU Member Forum because he’s got it right:<\/p>\n

I play a solo over the song over & over, building it from various licks, adding fill notes & space, tension & release, etc. Then I use that solo on stage. When jamming I typically will improvise on the fly, take some risks, etc because I want to improve this area of my playing. I also do this with jam tracks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bingo!<\/p>\n

Now granted, he may be a little further through the cycle than you are right now… so let me take it from the top…<\/p>\n

Step 1: Learn Your Universe<\/strong> – if you don’t have some notes to draw from, you have nothing. We mostly use the blues scale playing the blues, so this is actually fairly easy for us. We have the boxes to help us find the notes, or there’s always the good old “4 note solo” pattern or the “house” pattern if you’re familiar with that. If you want to call this learning scales, that’s fine, but they don’t have to be the same thing all the time.<\/p>\n

All of the notes in your universe won’t sound good all the time<\/em> – but none of them will ever sound wrong.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Start Small<\/strong> – There is a reason the first solo in Blues Guitar Unleashed<\/a> is only 12 bars long while the rest are 24 bars long (except 4 which is 36!) \u00a0Start with some simple solos that aren’t too hard to play<\/a>, or some simple licks that aren’t too hard to play. But if you start with licks, make sure they get put into a solo by someone who knows how… and not by you in some random order \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Step 3: Repeat<\/strong> – Don’t just learn 1 solo, you’ll need a lot. Learning simple solos (and as your technique builds, more complex ones) that are well thought out and put together will have a lasting impact on how you sound at the end of your journey. I would not sound like I do now had I not played along with SRV’s “Texas Flood” over and over again (the whole album… not just the 1 song.) I also would not sound the same had I not played AC\/DC’s “Back In Black” over and over again (my rock roots are showing…)<\/p>\n

Whatever you listen to and whatever you play along with will affect the end result. Don’t let that dictate what you listen to, but be aware of it when you have the choice to choose your listening.<\/p>\n

Step 4: Pull It All Apart<\/strong> – This is where my quote from earlier comes in to play. When you can play some solos and you feel like you have a good idea of where things are supposed to go, start pulling them apart and putting them back together again in different ways. Sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t. Repetition is the key and listening to what you have made to see if you like it or not.<\/p>\n

That process will pay off in spades for years to come.<\/p>\n

There were a couple of questions in yesterday’s post that may be answered now but I want to point out the big one just to be clear:<\/p>\n\r\n

\r\n
\n

If you aren't sure what you're doing and where to go - copying someone who does know what they are doing is your best bet!<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>
\nIn other words, if you have one of my courses and you feel a little lost about what to do, just put the DVD in and do the next lesson. Don’t worry if it hasn’t all come together yet, it will. Have faith in the process because the journey, in this case more than in most, is what creates the destination.<\/p>\n

So if you feel like you get lost soloing – open up the book and start on the next solo and don’t stop until you have it memorized and can play it along with the recording. When you’ve got that one down, do another.<\/p>\n

If you were to do a solo a month, you would be amazed at your playing 1 year from now, I guarantee it!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, yesterday’s post certainly “struck a chord” it seemed \ud83d\ude42 And that was the intent… to get you thinking a little and maybe wondering where to go from here… and I’m going to borrow someone’s comment from the BGU Member Forum because he’s got it right: I play a solo over the song over & […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6355,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6354\/revisions\/6355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}