{"id":6668,"date":"2015-08-10T22:13:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T05:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6668"},"modified":"2015-08-10T22:13:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T05:13:07","slug":"the-3-gig-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/the-3-gig-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"The 3 Gig Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

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 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

And it ain’t working out.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> like the solo you just learned. You’ll probably need to make some modifications and that requires knowing it in pieces.<\/p>\n

So first, you need to know 3 things about the lick:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What beat it starts on<\/em> – you don’t necessarily have to play it the same way, but you should know because that has the best chance of success<\/li>\n
  2. What beat it ends on<\/em> – 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.<\/li>\n
  3. What chord changes (if any) are going on behind the lick<\/em> – 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.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    (One other\u00a0thing, 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.)<\/p>\n

    So now that you have the lick under your fingers and you know when<\/em> all the notes are supposed to go it’s time to work with it for a while…<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    Session 1:<\/strong> 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<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    Session 2:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

    Session 3:<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

    Notice that this is 3 days with 1 lick<\/em>!<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

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

    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 \ud83d\ude42 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 […]<\/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\/6668"}],"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=6668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6669,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6668\/revisions\/6669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}