So as discussed elsewhere, if you're working on something or practicing something in particular, please tell us about it here!
From my point of view perhaps this thread will encourage me to practice a bit more.
At the moment I'm working on diminished scale stuff over dominant / altered 7ths. I have a backing track which is a loop of the first few bars of Larry Carlton's (It Was) Only Yesterday - there are a couple of places in that where you can play the diminished scale.
One really nice hack is that there are a number of major triads consisting of the diminished scale notes and if you deploy those in the right place, you get a lovely sophisticated, modern sound.
May post a video in a few days if I can get a bit more fluent with it.
Good luck! I wish I'd used a plectrum before now. It feels alien to me. People I've jammed with in the past have always commented on my unusual technique even with bass guitar. I sometimes pick in the traditional finger style, but intersperse this with a plectrum style action using the reverse of my index finger almost as if I'm holding an invisible pick. Unconventional and probably not conducive to progress as a player of either instrument. Still, stuck with it now and it's the way I enjoy playing.
Years ago I used to keep a Tele next to my desk and pick it up randomly and just out of laziness I started playing with my thumb. It does sound nice for jazz, in fact Wes Montgomery always played with his thumb so I'm in good company there. But I got out of the habit of playing with a pick, to the extent that I found playing with one to be a bit awkward.
However, playing with a thumb is limiting. You can't upstroke with a thumb, or at least I can't. So one good thing about playing with a thumb is that it brought my legato technique on a bit, to compensate for not using upstrokes.
This last few months though I've managed to train myself to play with a pick again. Except for chords, I have to use a thumb for those.
This is what I'm working on at the moment, improvising over the old Bossa standard
Corcovado. You can't just go for it .. you have to think about which scales to play over which sections of the tune and I'm variously using A Dorian, A natural minor, D natural minor, the diminished scale and a couple of others.
For some reason I always find it easier to think in minor scales than major so if a tune calls for the C Major scale in parts, as this one does, I'll just think A Minor (which - as any fule kno - consists of the same notes).
Sorry the guitar is a bit distorted, I'm using a very simple recording setup involving sending the output from Audacity to a Boss effects unit then recording the combined signal over USB using a webcam capture application. Works well enough usually but needs a bit more care than I applied here.
Very nice. Sorry, I hadn't spotted this before tonight. This kind of music always reminds me of a lounge bar I occasionally used to visit on a Sunday night for a meal or a quiet drink. A trio, I think, would be squeezed into a tiny corner and I could only watch them play as I stood at the bar. I wish I had taken a more patient approach to music when younger, getting to grips with the basics rather than just fumbling around the fretboard until I got close enough to satisfy my ear. I quite like the throaty tone as it breaks up slightly. I'd be interested to hear that style of playing in a higher gain setting. Might be a revelation.
I'm going to be doing some solo acoustic gigs this year (and may add a percussionist for some/all of them) so have started upping the practise regime.
Today I was working on an arpeggio for the intro to Wasted Years (which is in Em with the droned open E); I've seen it done on acoustic by the nut, so an octave lower than Maiden's original version - nothing wrong with that.
But I wanted to see if I could figure it out in the octave it "should" be and found if I fretted a standard C chord shape but with the first finger on the B string's 8th fret, then I had an Em chord* to work from, i.e.
0 (E)
8 (G)
0 (G)
9 (B)
10 (G)
0 (E)
That left my pinkie to fret the distinctive notes of the arpeggio (albeit I was doing this on the kid's small guitar at the time - and my slight affliction of my right hand didn't help - so it wasn't terribly clean).
But I got the finger movement pretty much down for the initial sequence over the Em, so now I need to figure out how to do it over D major and C major (I know!: Em-D-C in a Maiden song! How very unusual!).
I do need to pull my gigging acoustic guitar out of its case though and use that. Let's see how it goes. :)
* My acoustic is actually tuned to Eb standard.
I'm trying to introduce Coltrane changes into my improvising. A bit mindbending at the moment. I can play fast enough, but I can't think fast enough.
If you can get it right though, it sounds off-the-scale hip.
What are Coltrane changes? Well .. no never mind
Quote from: Slim on January 28, 2024, 12:32:12 AMI'm trying to introduce Coltrane changes into my improvising. A bit mindbending at the moment. I can play fast enough, but I can't think fast enough.
If you can get it right though, it sounds off-the-scale hip.
What are Coltrane changes? Well .. no never mind
"I start in the middle of a sentence and move in both directions at once." - John Coltrane
Good luck!
Quote from: Matt2112 on January 23, 2024, 07:26:35 PMI'm going to be doing some solo acoustic gigs this year (and may add a percussionist for some/all of them) so have started upping the practise regime.
Today I was working on an arpeggio for the intro to Wasted Years (which is in Em with the droned open E); I've seen it done on acoustic by the nut, so an octave lower than Maiden's original version - nothing wrong with that.
But I wanted to see if I could figure it out in the octave it "should" be and found if I fretted a standard C chord shape but with the first finger on the B string's 8th fret, then I had an Em chord* to work from, i.e.
0 (E)
8 (G)
0 (G)
9 (B)
10 (G)
0 (E)
That left my pinkie to fret the distinctive notes of the arpeggio (albeit I was doing this on the kid's small guitar at the time - and my slight affliction of my right hand didn't help - so it wasn't terribly clean).
———————-
I do need to pull my gigging acoustic guitar out of its case though and use that. Let's see how it goes. :)
This actually didn't go anywhere near as well as I thought it would - I underestimated the difference in the sizes between the kid's guitar and my APX and the fingering was impossible for a smooth and clean arpeggio; the tension caused by the stretching hampered the movements too much.
So for "gig-friendly" purposes for now, I've settled on just using pull-offs on the top E, like how it's originally performed, but getting the open G and B strings to ring in tandem to fill it out.
Was asked by one of the guitar players in my old band whether I wanted to help out doing a one off gig later this year for his (even older) band. So listening to demos recorded 35 years ago and figuring out the parts.
Next to the above, also putting some time into traditional metal covers, covering Breaking the Law (a LOT fster payed than you'd think!), Accept- Restless and Wild and Loudness - Crazy Doctor (which is really difficult to master, that tempo is killing! Plus the guitarist wants to kill me for picking that one, the solo is near impossible to do :-)). Fun times.
Ah yes, also this:
Used a fun app that mutes drums (or any instrument you want to). Don't judge to harsh, I had no monitor, just going off the speakers behind (!) me and the guitar player in front of me.
I'm working on a tune I attempted a few months ago but never came up with a satisfactory improv for, the lovely old Mancini tune Days of Wine and Roses. I'll post a video in a few days.
Interestingly I play in a noticeably different style if I use my semi-acoustic Epi than if I play it on a Strat or a Tele.
Just posted this as a test of embedding Soundcloud clips, but it's an improv I did over a backing track in February. I was trying to crowbar in a bit of diminished scale outside goodness, like Mike Stern.
Working on a solo acoustic version of Extreme's More Than Words with a view to performing it at gigs.
I learnt it to a kind of campfire standard many years ago, but now I want the finger-pluck-kuckle-hit technique that's distinctive of the song down to the point it's pretty much automatic, as well as ensuring I'm hitting the right walking bass notes with my thumb.
I'm not far off that (I need to remember to moderate the tempo though), so I can concentrate more on remembering the meandering chord progression (pretty much nailed) and, even more so, on my vocal performance; I listened to the song so much back in the day that the lyrics have been seared into my memory, but singing them requires some nuance, which is what needs the most work.
I'm going to road test it at a regular nearby open mic night tomorrow, ahead of a gig at my local toward the end of this month - where the goodwill I have there might have to come in handy! :)
Quote from: Matt2112 on September 04, 2024, 07:08:41 PMWorking on a solo acoustic version of Extreme's More Than Words with a view to performing it at gigs.
Popular song when we played a lot with the band in the 90s. We did it as well, the boys were front of the stage and since I did not do vocals (never felt the need) it gave me a short break in the set. For that alone it's a great song if you're a drummer ;D
Good luck mastering it!
Update on More Than Words:
A road test at the open mic went okay, so at the gig at my local three days later I decided I'd throw it in as set one's closer.
Now, I appreciate there'll be constant chatter while you're playing in a pub; however someone who had a foghorn of a belly-laugh that was literally as loud as my Bose S1 speaker chose pretty much the whole of MTW to be in fits of guffaws during whatever conversation he was having, pretty much ruining my performance of that song - the "quietest" in my 20-song setlist.
Of course, it wasn't intended as an act of sabotage, but it kind of killed the moment.
Anyway, I ran through it in public again at the subsequent open mic where quite a few of the punters and the barman sang along to it quite nicely, with the (excellent) host harmonising beautifully, so that went extremely well and I got a rousing reception which felt really good.
I'm getting more consistent and confident with the string-plucking element so practising that definitely is reaping dividends.
Well done Matt! It's not easy being up there especially in such a small and intimate (well, kind of) setting.
And yes: practice makes perfect.
I had the idea of sneaking my own guitar solo onto an old big band tune, like The Good Life or Fly Me To The Moon.
I'd more or less decided to use Sinatra's version of The Good Life, but Tony Bennett's is a bit slower so I decided to use that one. The plan was to take the vocal off one of the verses using AI and substitute guitar. But: it's very short and the song just won't work with half the vocal missing. So ..
I split the tune into vocal and music parts using https://vocalremover.org/ and loaded both the tracks into Audacity. Then I repeated the first verse (there's a sort of verse - verse - chorus structure, so it's now verse - verse - verse - chorus). Then I muted the vocal for the second verse (actually Tony comes in with the vocal a couple of beats before the split point so it wasn't quite that straightforward). So it's now 3 mins 10 seconds long instead of 2 mins 15 seconds, with a nice instrumental backing section to play over. It was really seamless, sounds very natural.
The hard part of course is recording a guitar solo over a beautiful old classic that doesn't sound like a crime against music. Fingers crossed.
Looking forward to hearing that!
Likewise, as Harry Enfield's mate used to say.
Quote from: Thenop on February 19, 2024, 01:00:59 PMWas asked by one of the guitar players in my old band whether I wanted to help out doing a one off gig later this year for his (even older) band. So listening to demos recorded 35 years ago and figuring out the parts.
The gig is tonight, headlining is an old English NWoBHM leftfield contender: More. Which is fun, I have the LPs they did in the early 80s.
Quote from: Thenop on November 23, 2024, 10:54:15 AMQuote from: Thenop on February 19, 2024, 01:00:59 PMWas asked by one of the guitar players in my old band whether I wanted to help out doing a one off gig later this year for his (even older) band. So listening to demos recorded 35 years ago and figuring out the parts.
The gig is tonight, headlining is an old English NWoBHM leftfield contender: More. Which is fun, I have the LPs they did in the early 80s.
Don't remember them. Must have a look.
Wow! Why did they not make it? It's a shame, great band, amazing singer.
The young 'un came home from school the other day singing Carols Of The Bells, specifically from the version by Pentatonix, which she is learning in music lessons.
So we've been watching and enjoying that on YouTube a lot, but I couldn't help having a look at a (lovely) sub-two minute solo classical guitar version, which also helpfully has tab.
Long story short, last night I started attempting to learn it, but didn't realise it's much trickier than a proper professional player makes it look, so I almost abandoned it within two minutes; I'm a strummer and picker, not a fingerstyle plucker, and my brain wasn't having any of the alien shapes and changes required.
But I persevered, and within an hour my playing resembled something like the video, albeit very rough around the edges, being a bit slower, more hesitant etc etc
But I was delighted and surprised I made decent progress from scratch and I'll be practising it regularly now.
Quote from: Matt2112 on December 10, 2024, 02:11:03 PMThe young 'un came home from school the other day singing Carols Of The Bells, specifically from the version by Pentatonix, which she is learning in music lessons.
So we've been watching and enjoying that on YouTube a lot, but I couldn't help having a look at a (lovely) sub-two minute solo classical guitar version, which also helpfully has tab.
Long story short, last night I started attempting to learn it, but didn't realise it's much trickier than a proper professional player makes it look, so I almost abandoned it within two minutes; I'm a strummer and picker, not a fingerstyle plucker, and my brain wasn't having any of the alien shapes and changes required.
But I persevered, and within an hour my playing resembled something like the video, albeit very rough around the edges, being a bit slower, more hesitant etc etc
But I was delighted and surprised I made decent progress from scratch and I'll be practising it regularly now.
I've been considering a new acoustic recently. Whenever I play now I find myself just noodling away with too many effects. It's fun but lazy and doesn't really improve my playing. I have an old Simon & Patrick acoustic but quite like the idea of a Baby Taylor. Shorter scale length so the strings will have less tension and will be easier on these old fingers. I also need more discipline. Earlier this year I started to learn A Design For Life with some encouragement from Nop & Slim. Those chord changes were so difficult for me but I began to make a bit of progress. However, I hadn't played it for ages and when I tried recently, it was almost back to square one. No substitute for putting those hours in.
I learned an economical version of Cavatina in the early '90s but I've forgotten how to play it now! Must have another go.
For reasons that will become apparent in the fullness of time (to coin a phrase), my main project at the moment is learning the words to Elvis Costello's Pump It Up.
Yes, there's quite a lot of them, but I'm using similar mnemonic tricks as for when I learnt One Week by Barenaked Ladies, which I can perform nowadays at the drop of a hat; I reason that if I can nail that, then I can nail most lyric-heavy songs.
Also, on a personal level, the occasional learning of lyric-heavy songs, especially with a rat-a-tat delivery, up to gig standard is a big F U to when I had half a day with expressive dysphasia immediately after my "accident".