Jalapeno - Spot check #3 - St. Louis Blues and course completion!

Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
Ok, here is spot check number 3. I've completed learning the song and can play it up to speed for the most part.

I really messed up a couple of the songs transitions, which I normally can hit, and they are pretty obvious. But since this is a spot check (a one take recording of where I am right now) you can ignore them :)

Now, since I've learned the song and just about everything in the course I am going to declare victory and say that I have completed another of Griff's BGU courses. I will continue to work on this song to smooth it out and get it performance ready to play in front of people live and will do a proper recording of it using a good guitar and some proper recording equipment (rather than a plywood guitar and a hand held recorder) and post that here in a couple of weeks.

But the important things are:

1. I've learned what I can from the course and try to use it all when playing
2. I've had a ton of fun and frustration
3. I've learned at least 4 tunes that will stay in my acoustic repertoire including St. Louis Blues
4. Griff Hamlin is a great teacher
5. I always try to complete what I start so I can check this one off the list :)
6. That is a long song! :)

Things to work on:
1. get transitions smooth, including the final chords
2. work on that 2nd fret A on the 3rd string in a C chord, I missed that 90% of the time
3. relax more and play it like I'm having fun

St. Louis Blues spot check 3

Eric
 

Thatman

Playin' for the fun of it.
You can be well proud of yourself with that one I found it to be a great listen. Anybody listening to you play this will be well jealous. (y)
 

artyman

Fareham UK
Got my foot tapping away, like most things the more you play it and get real comfortable so you almost go into automatic mode and relax the better you will sound.
 

Silicon Valley Tom

It makes me happpy to play The Blues!
St. Louis Blues is my favorite Blues piece. Stay with it Eric, you are doing a fine job. Reminds me of my days in Mississippi (1963-64), listening to Blues players.

Tom
 

Walt H

cloudbase - Aint got time for gravity
Jalapeno - This song is such a beast. I personally would be over the moon if I could play it as well as you did here. I am looking foreword to your 3 year update.

Just out of curiosity what are the tunes from this course that you still play?

Have you done any additional acoustic blues courses (from griff or others)? If so how do they rate compared to ABGU?
 

Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
Thanks Walt! After working on it so hard 3 years ago I was happy to get through it. I have some company here at the house now but they are leaving tomorrow. I'll see if I can rustle up a recording this weekend. I'll record everything that I still play from the course. It isn't everything but just the ones I like to play.

After I finished the course Griff came out with Traveling Blues and Spent Money Blues. I went through them but I can't say that I still play them much. The reason is before they came out I found Toby Walker. He has a lot of good instruction but, except for his beginners course, the arrangements are for late intermediate and advanced acoustic blues players. Griff got my skill level to a good place and Toby Walker's lessons pick up at that point and get advanced.

Eric
 

matonanjin

Chubby, old guy trying to play some blues.
Really great job, Eric. I liked this a lot. The main thing that came through to me is you sounded very relaxed and comfortable.
 

Ivan

Blues Newbie
Jalapeno, that was great from start to finish. Great touch, feel and tone. Congrats on completing the course. You and Jmin are an inspiration. So what next?
 

Walt H

cloudbase - Aint got time for gravity
Jalapeno - I started this bad boy today. I am curious are you using your thumb for the F or are you barring? I am going with my thumb largely b/c it seems like a useful skill to nail down
 

Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
Jalapeno, that was great from start to finish. Great touch, feel and tone. Congrats on completing the course. You and Jmin are an inspiration. So what next?
Thanks Ivan. This is an old thread, I completed the course in Dec. 2016. It is nice to inspire a bit since I've received so much inspiration from around these parts.

As for what I've been doing since, I do some lessons from Toby Walker to keep my hand in the blues and down in the Other Member Recordings section I've posted some non-blues finger style pieces that I like to play (Beatles, Bach, and stuff I learned from the Learn and Master Finger Style course). But mostly, the past 18 months or so I've been doing my version of EDM type music (I got a couple of Korg Electribes for a birthday and an Ableton Push 2 for Christmas one year) and I've been learning Orchestration and Composing. That takes a lot of time.

Eric
 
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Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
Jalapeno - I started this bad boy today. I am curious are you using your thumb for the F or are you barring? I am going with my thumb largely b/c it seems like a useful skill to nail down
Yes I use the thumb over the top. I have reasonably long fingers but found the thumb over the top so much easier when simultaneously picking the melody. The DVD course I started with didn't mention anything about using the thumb but then later on the instructor told me his fingers are really short and he could never do it that way so he didn't put it into his course. I learned it from Griff in this course.
Eric
 

Jalapeno

Student Of The Blues
I didn't think I'd have time to record an update today but while my better half was getting ready to go out I sat down and turned on my old Tascam DR-03 hand-held and played this. Left the mistakes and warts in it. Sorry about the fan noise in the background, It's muggy this morning.

St. Louis Blues 2.75 years after finishing the ABGU course.

Martin HD-28 with old strings (I like my Seagull so the Martin doesn't get played much).

Eric
 

jmin

Student Of The Blues
Great job Eric! Thanks for the added inspiration to get this done! I really like your solid bass notes and timing.
Three years later?! Excellent!
 

Walt H

cloudbase - Aint got time for gravity
I know its the blues but I could'nt wipe the smile off my face listening to that. Beautiful.
 
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