Blues sound

Pretty good.

The very beginning was a little rough, lots of bad notes, but then it improved a lot. The wah was a nice effect and gave the notes more sustain. To me, the best passage was around 4:00. Here you sounded good and warmed up and hitting good notes.

Your timing was very good and your phrasing as well.

Keep up the good work. And yeah, it this is what you like most, get an electric. :D

Thanks for the feedback wes....I noticed that about the beginning too thats why I faded into it :wink: Just one question about bad notes, did I hit them wrong ya think because I always thought that if you stay within the key of the backtrack music you could pretty much hit any note as long as its timed right, but maybe that was it, the timing was off at that part

I do get the urge for an electric sometimes but I also like strumming tunes. I have tons more to learn anyway about theory. Alot of my better sounding stuff is alot of luck on good days. Staying in time is probably the most valuable thing to do because it makes it easy to lay down tracks one rhythm and one single notes....anyway thanks I'll stop babbling

Jone: No, that is way too simplistic. Let's take a progression in C: C-Am-F-G. Each chord has the following notes:

C=C E G
Am=A C E
F=F A C
G=G B D

Record this progression and play lead over it using this scale:
C-minor pentatonic first: C Eb F G Bb

Now start by droning the C over every chord. Listen to how each chord will make the C sound somewhat different. Write down each chord you feel goes nicely with the C. You'll probably conclude that it sounds perfect with the first free chords, and a bit weirder but still acceptable over the G chord (a G-major chord plus a C is a Gadd11).

Now take the next note, the Eb. Drone it over each chord again. Now that is more interesting, right? It sounds bluesy on some chords and downright dissonant on others. Decide for yourself over which chord you find this note acceptable. Continue to do this with every note in the C-minor pentatonic scale and make a simple table for quick reference.

Now when you start to play a solo, play either the notes you wrote down as acceptable for that chord or any of the chord-tones not included in the scale. Make sure you are fully aware of which chord the band is playing at every single moment and make sure you play the right notes against them. This might seem a lot of work at first but it will get more instinctive the more you practice. So get yourself an electric and as many songs and backingtracks as you can find and start playing.

Hint: 95% of blues music uses the I, IV and V chords only. They are dealt with in the example above (in C that C, F, G) so if you do the excercises above you'll quickly feel more secure in blues. Improvisation is more then guessing notes from a scale. :D

Arjen, I tried it I played a progression strumming those chords. I found of course that the letter note and letter chord are perfect matches. I hope my ear will handle this task eventually because I can't remember notes on the fret board, nor do I have the ability to know what chords are being played in backtrack music only the key. What I can do is run scales in different keys and sometimes I remember what striking a certain string will sound like sometimes. I've seen that 'I IV V' before pertaining to chords and can't seem to comprehend it (I'm dense) if you explain it I will probably still be too dense, but you could try :wink: up till now i been relying on a natural sense of rhythm and timing because of lack of time to study this stuff and being kinda lazy :)

jone, I'm listening now, but while I do, I'll try to explain I IV V

Those are the roman numerals for One, Four, and Five. If you are playing in G, and it sounds like you are:

The (I) is G, the name of the Key.

Now, counting G, count 4 notes in the musical alphabet, I bolded them for you to avoid any confusion. A B C D E F G G A B C. So the FOUR chord (IV) is C. Note that its posistion compared to the (I) chord, G (when played as a barre chord)

If you were in the key of A, the four chord would be A B C D E F G
D, again, note the posistion of the D barre chord compared to the A barre chord, this relationship exists between any (I) chord and any (IV) chord of the same key.

Back to the key of G, the Five chord. Just count 5 notes (counting G) over from G. A B C D E F G So the V chord is D. Note it's relationship to the one and four chord, again, this is the same for every key.

I hope that helps.

And, memorize the notes on the neck. It's not as hard as you might think, you CAN do it, you just have to put effort into it. At the very LEAST, memorize the notes on the low E and A strings, without that, it'll be very hard to understand (and put into practice) I IV V.

On low E:

1st fret: F
3rd fret: G
5th fret: A
7th fret: B
8th fret: C
10th fret: D
12th fret: E

On A:
2nd fret: B
3rd fret: C
5th fret: D
7th fret: E
8th fret: F
10th fret: G
12th fret: A

It's also to learn the notes on the other strings as well. You need to be able to accenuate certain notes depending on what chord is being played. For now, if you're in the key of G, it is sufficient to just know where the I IV V notes of the pentatonic scale are.

Some "G" spots ;) are :

3rd fret of Low E
5th fret of D
8th fret of B
3rd fret of High E

Some C spots are:
3rd fret of A
5th fret of G
8th fret of high E

Some D spots are:
5th fret of A
7th fret of G
3rd fret of B
10th fret of high E

Don't forget, starting at the 12th fret, everything repeats...
So the 15th fret of Low E, would be G, etc. I'm not going to explain that, because with your acoustic it might be hard to play that high anyways.

Hope that helped some.

Taso

Thanks much taso that does help I know now it refers to only letters not flats or sharps. The barre chord thing helps too maybe I was confused because I was trying to connect the whole thing with open chords ( I still don't use barres in my playing) I can think barres now and apply it to open chords....i'll read this a few more times. BTW it seems like kramer is telling me this :wink:

That avatar messes with me everything I see it.

lol.

The theory works with open chords as well, I just find it easier to visualize it with barre chords, as there is a constant pattern that is the same for every key. For open chords, just use the method of writing out the musical alphabet, A B C D E F G, and counting 4 notes to find the 4th, or 5 notes to find the 5th.