I worked the blues scale hard last night. At first I was still playing a wrong note here and there, but as practice went on I got better and better. I moved my fingers up and down the fretboard so I could get used to playing it starting on different frets. About halfway through practice, instead of just playing he notes one after the other, I started giving the scale a blues cadence... "DUM di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM di-DUM". After a couple minutes of this something awesome happened. I started wanting to repeat parts of the scale, or reverse direction. I then remembered that my guitar teacher said that often in blues music(not just blues guitar) the artist rolls up or down to the next note instead of just going to it(I can't remember what the musical term for that is, but I remember there was a term and a musical notation for it from my trumpet days.) I started pushing or pulling on a string to bend up to the next note and skipping actually fingering it. I also figured out that I could do the same thing going down if I skipped a note, but bent the string before strumming the note after that one, and then "un-bending" the note. (I'm obviously going to have to get the proper terminology for this stuff, but this morning is too busy for me to go look it up on the net just yet.)
I was very happy with the results, but was a little frustrated that my fingers just could not keep up with the sound I was hearing in my head. That will come with time, I know. At the same time, when I was getting it right, I started to get so excited about what I was hearing, the I invariably would screw up the next note. I finally just laughed out loud at my predicament. I guess this is progress though. I'm happy with it. =D
No comments:
Post a Comment