Guys - thanks for the kind comments. Every time I listen to this I identify more details to work on, but that's the whole point of doing the recording - it's so valuable to progressing and improving one's playing. I also find that embarrassing myself publicly give me more incentive to keep working on something
Bluesmadd - I had many reasons for skipping to this solo - too many to list, but basically, as I was slogging through SBS, when I came to understand the concept of working from roots and the left and right facing major minor patterns, I looked ahead and saw the concept of every chord as one. This instantly resonated with me, so I started to focus on that. I didn't actually start out with the idea of learning the solo as a "performance" piece, because it was clearly way beyond my ability. I'd listen to Griff play it and shake my head in awe. Then I watched the video of him playing it, and it made me sick how
effortlessly he plays it!!! That is the true sign of amazing skills and mastery of the instrument.
I started just analyzing each lick to understand its origin. As I played some of the easier parts, and then moved on to some of the harder ones, I became enamored with the idea of actually learning the whole thing. I can't tell you exactly how long it took (quite a few months for sure), but I am able to play the whole thing from memory without any problem (except for all the mistakes).
I also quickly realized that this solo example contains the virtual encyclopedia of blues techniques and skills - so I figured, why not work on everything on a single piece of music? Also, there is a cornucopia of licks in this piece that one can apply Murnahan's "Torn Down" approach to, in order to build a huge additional vocabulary of licks.
This solo definitely challenged, and continues to challenge,
virtually every aspect of my playing. What could be better? Now I need to clean up each lick, and continue to work on speed. Seriously, it could take years - if I live that long.
My approach to learning the difficult and long licks is different than yours. I prefer to play them as painfully slowly, as many times as I need to, in order to get every note, and then gradually speed them up. Once I have the note sequence solidly in my brain, the speed comes much more quickly. Then I work on the timing.
For me, it is impossible to actually count many of the measures in this solo - they are too complicated and approach "free form" playing. I think the most important thing is to play every note as cleanly as possible, and END at the right time. With MANY slides and pull offs, often in the same lick, that is difficult. There is also tricky timing throughout this piece, for both short and long licks. My solution is to make sure I hit the last note of the lick at the right time, count the duration of that last note, and count the rest until the next lick starts. This works for me - most of the time - until I hit the record button, and then it's all out the window. Why is that?
As far as my gear setup goes, I played this on my James Tyler Variax JTV-69 (Strat style) using the '59 Les Paul emulation - so this is a modeled guitar sound. The guitar goes into a cheap Joyo compressor set for just a slight clean boost, and then to my 11 Rack using the Deluxe amp model - then the 11R into a small cheap mixer and it to the recorder. I just go through the mixer in order to have a handy volume control.
The Variax is pretty new to me, but I am really impressed with it - the more I play it the more I like it.
Sorry for the long "blog".
Now back to practicing!
Tom