I had a really neat conversation with a friend of mine who is a great musician… but trained VERY differently than I was.<\/p>\n
He grew up playing mostly classical music until college when he had some jazz classes and some improvisation classes.<\/p>\n
I guess you could say those classes “didn’t stick” very well.<\/p>\n
And he wants to play the blues so badly, but he feels very stuck in the “I can’t play it if it’s not on the page” rut.<\/p>\n
Now believe me, I have nothing at all against classical music and I think it’s wonderful and I studied it deeply for many years and performed as a solo classical guitarist many times.<\/p>\n
… but it’s not the blues and it’s such a very different approach.<\/p>\n
And many students really struggle with playing music that isn’t on the page in front of them like my friend… maybe you are one of those people?<\/p>\n
If you are, I have some news for you… at some point you are going to have to take a step off the ledge and go for it and just try<\/em>.<\/p>\n Trying usually involves failing, to some degree, and that’s what you want… in fact, you want to fail as quickly as possible so that you’ll know what not to do next time \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n But there’s more to it than that… failing reminds you that this is not brain surgery\u00a0and\u00a0the penalty for error is really not that bad.\u00a0You can always try again<\/em> and improve.<\/p>\n Let’s say you’ve been through my Blues Guitar Unleashed<\/a> course. Or at least you’ve been through the first 8 or 10 lessons….<\/p>\n At that point you’ll have quite a few rhythmic fragments that you’ve picked up. There are several chords and variations, some rhythmic ideas, and some common blues “riffs.”<\/p>\n But what happens when you go to play over a jam track with no guitar on it? Do you know what you’ll play?<\/p>\n The possibilities become endless almost immediately and for many people that creates and instant panic situation and absolutely nothing comes out.<\/p>\n But in reality, almost anything you come up with will probably be right (or at least, not wrong.) As long as you have the right chords for a 12 bar blues<\/a> (assuming you are playing a 12 bar blues) there are no rules and no right answer to what to play – so just play something and try to record yourself doing it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Why? Simple… when you’re done you can go back and listen to yourself playing along with the track (this is why I include “no guitar” tracks in Blues Guitar Unleashed<\/a>.)<\/p>\n How does it sound? Do you like it? Then it’s good. Don’t like it so much? Listen again and see if you can hear why you don’t like it…. then try to correct it and go again.<\/p>\n The process of doing that will bring more progress to your playing than you can possibly imagine… but you still have to try first<\/em>.<\/p>\n But what about if you hear a blues rhythm you want to try to copy?<\/p>\n Well you’ll need 2 things, the chords and the rhythm. There aren’t that many blues chords<\/a> on the planet and chances are (again if you’ve been through a course or 2) that you have most, if not all, of them down pretty good.<\/p>\n You know the chords are likely 7th, 9th, or maybe 13 chords… so try them out along with the recording until you find the one that sounds about the same. Does it have to be perfect? Of course not. But you’ll get more and more perfect the more often you try (are you seeing a theme yet?)<\/em><\/p>\n For the rhythm…can you hum it along with the beat? Good, strum when you hum and you’ve got it. Can’t hum it? You won’t be able to play it either so you need to fix that first.<\/p>\n Simple.<\/p>\n Do you want to solo? Have you learned a blues box<\/a> or 2 but can’t bring yourself to actually play a solo?<\/p>\n