{"id":6979,"date":"2016-10-27T23:12:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T06:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6979"},"modified":"2016-10-27T23:12:28","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T06:12:28","slug":"0-to-frustrated-in-seconds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/0-to-frustrated-in-seconds\/","title":{"rendered":"0 To Frustrated In Seconds&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I&#8217;ve been &#8220;conversing&#8221; with quite a few students (both privately and digitally) about their biggest struggles&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Well I&#8217;ve been reading through some of the responses over the last several hours and one thing has been sticking out that I can address well in this format &#8211; so here goes \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-6980 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/iStock_000003503592XSmall-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Guitar frustration\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/iStock_000003503592XSmall-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/iStock_000003503592XSmall.jpg 283w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The problem is &#8211; frustration. Lots of people start a song, or a lesson, get partway (or not very far) into it, realize it&#8217;s hard, and stop out of frustration.<\/p>\n<p>Then&#8230; come to find out they&#8217;re trying to learn Gary Moore&#8217;s &#8220;Still Got The Blues&#8221; solo, or Stevie Ray Vaughan&#8217;s &#8220;Texas Flood&#8221; solo when they&#8217;ve only been playing for a couple of years (and even that was sporadic.)<\/p>\n<p>The answer is simple (it usually is,) the songs are too darn hard! I couldn&#8217;t play those solos worth a darn until I&#8217;d been playing over a decade (with several hours a day of practice under my belt for a few of those.)<\/p>\n<p>So in this little article, hopefully I can give you some things to look for and know whether a song will be (somewhat) easy, middle of the road, or really challenging&#8230; and why.<\/p>\n<h3>Easy Lessons\/Songs<\/h3>\n<p>Song and lessons are going to be easy when they:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>are in straight feel (as opposed to a swing feel, or a slow blues feel.)<\/li>\n<li>keep to quarter and 1\/8th notes, and don&#8217;t do 1\/16th notes or complex rhythms (triplets, for example.)<\/li>\n<li>are at a moderate tempo &#8211; not slower than about 70 or 80 beats per minute, and not faster than maybe 120 beats per minute (these are super rough guesses, but you get the idea.)<\/li>\n<li>Stay in time all the way through &#8211; there are no licks or sections that are played as a &#8220;flurry&#8221; that is out of time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Some &#8220;easy&#8221; songs that come to mind are songs like:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Thrill Is Gone &#8211; straight feel, moderate tempo, very few things faster than an 1\/8th note.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;strumming songs&#8221; like Margaritaville, a lot of old Beatles tunes, Maggie Mae, old Bob Dylan stuff, a lot of Eagles tunes. Songs where you just strum the chords along and someone sings. But keep in mind that if you try to sing and play at the same time, that&#8217;s a whole different animal!<\/li>\n<li>Some Albert King, like &#8220;Breaking Up Somebody&#8217;s Home,&#8221; and &#8220;I&#8217;ll Play The Blues For You&#8221; are straight feel, but some of the licks have sixteenth notes in them. Otherwise they are fairly straightforward.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Medium\/Intermediate Lessons\/Songs<\/h3>\n<p>Song and lessons are going to be at a more intermediate level when they:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>have the more complex shuffle\/swing feel OR are a faster straight feel (like Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, or House Is Rockin&#8217; by SRV.)<\/li>\n<li>Add in swing 1\/8th notes and triplets but don&#8217;t have sixteenth notes or sextuplets.<\/li>\n<li>Stay in time and don&#8217;t use &#8220;flurries&#8221; or anything that&#8217;s out of time.<\/li>\n<li>are a moderate tempo (not slow blues) or super fast (like a jump blues.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>As you can probably imagine, a TON of songs fall into this category. Some quick ones off the top of my head are:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m Tore Down &#8211; Freddie King or Eric Clapton&#8217;s recordings<\/li>\n<li>Johnny B. Goode &#8211; Chuck Berry<\/li>\n<li>Pride And Joy &#8211; SRV (this is at the top end of intermediate I would say)<\/li>\n<li>Sweet Home Chicago (Clapton&#8217;s recording)<\/li>\n<li>Fire &#8211; Hendrix (and probably about the only Hendrix tune that is not advanced.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Advanced Lessons\/Songs<\/h3>\n<p>You start hitting the advanced (and up!) level when things like this start showing up regularly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Really fast or really slow tempos. It&#8217;s as hard to stay in time below 60 bpm as it is above 140!<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;flurries&#8221; or any group of notes that flows in and out of time. Slow blues is notorious for this. Check out any slow blues by Hendrix or Johnny Winter, or &#8220;Have You Ever Loved A Woman&#8221; by Eric Clapton.<\/li>\n<li>1\/16th notes and double time triplets (sextuplets) &#8211; this means just about any Joe Bonamassa or Gary Moore solo.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Some really challenging songs that people often try to learn are tunes like:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Red House &#8211; anything by Hendrix is going to be really tough because it&#8217;s so out of time mostly.<\/li>\n<li>Johnny Winter &#8211; I have yet to hear anything by Johnny Winter that isn&#8217;t really hard.<\/li>\n<li>Still Got The Blues &#8211; or really anything by Gary Moore, Joe Bonamassa, Walter Trout, or most of the blues\/rock crowd.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep in mind that a LOT of times a song is pretty straightforward and might even be easy or lower intermediate &#8211; but the solo is off the charts. &#8220;Still Got The Blues,&#8221; isn&#8217;t super hard until you add in the solos.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly songs like, &#8220;Further On Up The Road&#8221; as performed by Joe Bonamassa and Eric Clapton are blues jam standards and aren&#8217;t real hard at all until you try to play the solos note for note. That&#8217;s when you want to throw\u00a0in an easier solo to take up the space.<\/p>\n<p>Now believe me, I really want you to aspire to play like your heroes, whomever they may be&#8230; just not if you&#8217;re a 1st (or maybe even 5th) year student. You&#8217;ll enjoy what you do a lot more, and you&#8217;ll get more sense of accomplishment if you stick to things that are just out of reach &#8211; not light years out of reach!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I&#8217;ve been &#8220;conversing&#8221; with quite a few students (both privately and digitally) about their biggest struggles&#8230; Well I&#8217;ve been reading through some of the responses over the last several hours and one thing has been sticking out that I can address well in this format &#8211; so here goes \ud83d\ude42 The problem is &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/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\/6979"}],"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=6979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6981,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions\/6981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}