Counting ...

A

AndrewMcKelvey

Blues Newbie
upload_2020-11-9_11-57-37.png
I have been working on this over the weekend and I am struggling to get the end of the second bar to sound right, I do have the audio, its a bit like the blues brothers riff. The problem is I am counting 1&a 2&a etc and playing on the 1 and a to get the shuffle feel but it doesn't work for the end of the second 'bar'. If I count in fours the end bit is sort of ok but the triplets are off, counting in three's means the end of bar 2 is off, I have even tried winging it and that sounds worse.

Anyone got any bright ideas because I tend to run into this brick wall regularly. My best is counting the third beat 3&aa and playing the start of the slide on the second a and holding the fourth fret D string for the count of 4 of 4e&a, still not great but might be Im not fast enough
 
JPsuff

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
AndrewMcKelvey said:
View attachment 12935
I have been working on this over the weekend and I am struggling to get the end of the second bar to sound right, I do have the audio, its a bit like the blues brothers riff. The problem is I am counting 1&a 2&a etc and playing on the 1 and a to get the shuffle feel but it doesn't work for the end of the second 'bar'. If I count in fours the end bit is sort of ok but the triplets are off, counting in three's means the end of bar 2 is off, I have even tried winging it and that sounds worse.

Anyone got any bright ideas because I tend to run into this brick wall regularly. My best is counting the third beat 3&aa and playing the start of the slide on the second a and holding the fourth fret D string for the count of 4 of 4e&a, still not great but might be Im not fast enough
Click to expand...


1&2&3&a4&a
 
dvs

dvs

Green Mountain Blues
To work with those sixteenth notes, divide up the beat into six parts instead of three. So you could count 12-34-56 in the same space as 1-&-a. In a swing or shuffle feel, in beat 4 of the second measure that first sixteenth note should cover (12), the second one takes up (34), the third one is 5, fourth one is 6.
 
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MikeS

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
I had to delete some notes to make it "sound right" and make it more comfortable to play.

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PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
My software doesn't easily do repeats (you can read that as "I don't know how yet.") so I wrote it out doubling each of the two measures.
I didn't count the first one, because it is straight 8th notes. This is a straight feel, not a shuffle. The underdots indicate staccato. Anyhow, here is the count I got"
4barsnap.jpg
and here is what it sounds like. https://fuzzypinkstrap.com/forum/McKelvey-Pattern In A.mp3

I also took the liberty and put it into a 12 bar pattern (without the repeats).
https://fuzzypinkstrap.com/forum/McKelvey-APattern-12 barExtended.mp3
 
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MikeS

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
PapaRaptor said:
My software doesn't easily do repeats (you can read that as "I don't know how yet.") so I wrote it out doubling each of the two measures.
I didn't count the first one, because it is straight 8th notes. This is a straight feel, not a shuffle. The underdots indicate staccato. Anyhow, here is the count I got"
View attachment 12938
and here is what it sounds like. https://fuzzypinkstrap.com/forum/McKelvey-Pattern In A.mp3

I also took the liberty and put it into a 12 bar pattern (without the repeats).
https://fuzzypinkstrap.com/forum/McKelvey-APattern-12 barExtended.mp3
Click to expand...


When I first looked at it I did it in straight feel and it seemed to work out fine, but the catch is that he said it was in Swing so metric modulation or 12/8.
 
Paleo

Paleo

Student Of The Blues
I don't see any indication that it's swing feel.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + (3 e) + uh 4 e + uh

2nd measure beat 3 = ( 1 8th and 2 16ths) = 3 e + uh

If it is swing feel, you got a problem dividing a third of a beat in two. o_O
 
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PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
In straight time, it's pretty easy. I even built a metronome click track sample to match the count, just to make sure I was actually counting and playing the same thing. https://fuzzypinkstrap.com/forum/Metronome-pattern-straight.mp3 @60bpm

I tried it again in a swing feel and it just doesn't make sense. I can make everything fit, but the 1/16th notes in swing feel make it sound like you're trying to put too many notes in, like @MikeS said.
I would like to hear any source recording that might be available, because for the life of me, can't make it work (and I want to know what I'm missing) with a swing feel.
 
dvs

dvs

Green Mountain Blues
Don't know if this will make any more sense than my post above, but this is what I was trying to say.
Screenshot 2020-11-09 182401.png
 
PapaRaptor

PapaRaptor

Father Vyvian O'Blivion
Staff member
sdbrit68 said:
I think thats the rhythm to Great whites "Once Bitten Twice Shy"
Click to expand...
There must be a hundred tunes that use that basic rhythm, both straight and shuffle/swing feel. Half of Chuck Berry's catalog use it. I spent an easy hour going through stuff on Youtube that I thought might exactly match the riff. I was certain it was Johnny Rivers cover of Maybelline... but it's not. Nor is it several different covers of LIttle Queenie or Memphis, although both are close, but don't use the last lick in the example.
 
A

AndrewMcKelvey

Blues Newbie
Thanks for the replies, they have been helpful, but perhaps I should come clean..I recently bought a book called the Chicago Blues Method by Andi Saitenhieb published by Fundemental Music, I have a number of their tutorials and highly recommend them, this example comes from early on in the book, it doesn't say what the tune is (the book talks about Jimmy Reid in the following paragraph so could be influeneced by him) but the book comes with audio and on listening I thought it sounded Blues Brothers ish and perhaps like a hundred others, it was the riff I was taken with. The book says to transpose the examples into different keys and play in different feels to make the thing your own, which is where the swing came from, I was trying to count it a number of ways but couldn't get the swing feel to work..or sound like the audio, I was going to add the audio here but for some reason the forum tells me it the file has an invalid extension and I have tried a number of ways to get it on here.?
 
MikeS

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
I'm afraid that I don't have a technical answer for you, but it seems to be a problem getting 6 sixteenth notes in essentially 1.5 beats. In straight feel, that's exactly what it is, but in swing it's really just four "positions" (I don't know what word to use). It's the Uh of 3 and the 4&u. NO matter what I do to try to shoehorn those notes in they just don't feel like swing anymore.. I suspect that in spite of what the instructions say, this lick was never meant to go over a swing feel.
Maybe @Griff can chime in with amore technical or at least a clearer answer.
 
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