M2M Day 121: Attempting to play a stunning blues guitar solo
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For March, my goal is to play a 5-minute blues guitar solo.
Today, I start a new month and a new challenge: Can I play a stunning, expressive, and engaging 5-minute-long blues guitar solo after one month of intensive practice?
Measuring success
Measuring success for this challenge is fairly tricky. It’s not clear how I should quantify “stunning, expressive, and engaging”, nor is it clear that “stunning, expressive, and engaging” are the most desirable qualities of a good guitar solo.
With that said, the hope is that I can play something that is good enough to keep the attention of those who listen for five straight minutes.
Considering most songs on the radio are under three minutes, five minutes of blues playing (which is naturally very redundant in chordal structure) is a long time to maintain interest.
To do this, I will need to cultivate a large blues vocabulary, develop the dexterity necessary to express my musical ideas, and learn how to create/sustain musical tension.
What’s my starting point?
For this challenge, I’m not starting from zero. In fact, I have a ten-year off-and-on history with the guitar, which will certainly help. However, 90% of this history has been acoustic-focused, so this month’s emphasis on electric “lead playing” (i.e. soloing) is newer and more exciting for me.
Here’s my guitar journey so far:
For my 13th birthday, I received an acoustic guitar, which sat in my room untouched for nearly a year. The following summer, at summer camp, my friend taught me a few chords, and, upon returning home, I started playing more regularly.
During high school, I continued on the acoustic guitar, strumming and plucking my way through (mostly) pop songs. When I was a senior in high school, I was gifted an electric guitar, which I started to noodle on.
When I went off to college, I didn’t bring either guitar. My freshman and sophomore roommates both had nylon string acoustic guitars, so I’d occasionally borrow those. During my junior year, I only touched a guitar the few times I was visiting home for the holidays. For my last semester at Brown, since my course-load was pretty light, I brought my electric guitar to school, and tried to regain some of the abilities I had cultivated ~4 years prior.
When I moved out to California, both of my guitars stayed at my parent’s house, but I did bring the more portable ukulele, which I’ve played about twice per month for the past 1.5 years.
Recently, my parent’s shipped my electric guitar to San Francisco, and I’ve been getting back into lead playing.
I’m hopeful that, with one month of intensive practice, I can make a major leap forward.
My influences
If I could emulate only one blues guitarist, I’d study B.B. King, whose playing is warm, sweet, and typically major-sounding. John Mayer, who is heavily influenced by B.B. King, also often plays with this kind of warmth.
Stylistically, I prefer this kind of blues playing to the playing of more traditional, minor-sounding blues players like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King.
Nevertheless, I can probably learn from all these guitarists, blending their styles with my own sensibilities to create my ideal sound.
But, before I get ahead of myself, I should start by nailing down the fundamentals…
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
