Term 2 - Lesson 4
Today we continued with our exploration of blues music. We began the lesson with theory and wrote down 12 bar blues structures for several different keys. I found this easy because I have learned that for blues songs, you commonly use the first, fourth and fifth chord in the key. Secondly we practised playing these structures in different ways; for example with power chords, open chords and barre chords. We even went as far to explore the chords in the CAGED system, which I am beginning to understand a bit more.
As always, we practised soloing over these chords progression but today we kept everything the the key of G. To spice up our solos we alternated between the G minor pentatonic and the G blues scales; the only difference between them being the blues scale has extra notes. We were given a sheet with several different blues licks for us to try out and potentially use in our own solos. My favourite on was this:
E ---6p3--------------
B ---------3-----------
G ------------5^---3--
D----------------------
A----------------------
E-----------------------
I like this one because it is short and simple so it is easy to remember but it also includes techniques such as pull offs and a bend which adds extra flavour to the solo. You can also move it down to the B string and play it there.
We also looked at using call and response in our solos to emphasise the space in the music. This idea helped me because using the space within the song adds structure and puts less pressure on me to make something that sounds amazing.
Something that really helped me in this lesson was when we looked at keys and how to work them out. For me, this will be a good thing to practise for two reasons: a) It will help me memorise which keys have sharps or flats and how many they have and b) it will help me learn the notes on the fretboard. This was a long term goal for me at the start of the year so doing this every time I practise will definitely help me achieve it. From my compositions at GCSE level I already know that D major has 2 sharps but today I learned that B major has two flats Eb and Bb. This is because when writing major scales you have to write the name of each note once. Using B major as an example, it would look strange if you wrote B, C#, D, D#, F, G, A, A# on a stave because there would be nothing written on the lines for E and B. Therefore we write D# as Eb and A# as Bb to make the stave look easier to read.
As always, we practised soloing over these chords progression but today we kept everything the the key of G. To spice up our solos we alternated between the G minor pentatonic and the G blues scales; the only difference between them being the blues scale has extra notes. We were given a sheet with several different blues licks for us to try out and potentially use in our own solos. My favourite on was this:
E ---6p3--------------
B ---------3-----------
G ------------5^---3--
D----------------------
A----------------------
E-----------------------
I like this one because it is short and simple so it is easy to remember but it also includes techniques such as pull offs and a bend which adds extra flavour to the solo. You can also move it down to the B string and play it there.
We also looked at using call and response in our solos to emphasise the space in the music. This idea helped me because using the space within the song adds structure and puts less pressure on me to make something that sounds amazing.
Something that really helped me in this lesson was when we looked at keys and how to work them out. For me, this will be a good thing to practise for two reasons: a) It will help me memorise which keys have sharps or flats and how many they have and b) it will help me learn the notes on the fretboard. This was a long term goal for me at the start of the year so doing this every time I practise will definitely help me achieve it. From my compositions at GCSE level I already know that D major has 2 sharps but today I learned that B major has two flats Eb and Bb. This is because when writing major scales you have to write the name of each note once. Using B major as an example, it would look strange if you wrote B, C#, D, D#, F, G, A, A# on a stave because there would be nothing written on the lines for E and B. Therefore we write D# as Eb and A# as Bb to make the stave look easier to read.
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