Yet, some more notes, on playing blues guitar…

But first…
Dulltown, UK: Today’s supermarket vegetable, that you are not sure about, is the pak choi.
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Well, I thought that I’d finished with these short pieces about playing blues guitar, but there were a couple of things that I meant to put in the previous one, but I didn’t, for some reason.

Yes, I’m sorry to say that proper blues is actually dead now, nearly all the proper blues people have gone. But it is struggling on with singers and players who just love the old music, and have a go at it themselves – yes, dear reader, I am one of them.
Last time I was talking about, and my advice was, don’t just learn the guitar and harp bits from the old songs and parrot them out to your audiences, if you have an audience, that is. Same with the singing, don’t try to be Muddy Waters, or Howlin’ Wolf, (who could try to be Howlin’ Wolf?) – use your own voice, and make it your own! Mick Jagger and Eric Burdon did it rather well.

Uncle Dave’s advice:
The guitar bits.
Don’t just trot out perfect copies of the original riffs, and the solos, from the records. People who like blues, who have managed to turn up to see you, have heard them all before!
Try to make the bits that you play, interesting… That’s what I used to try to do.

Here are a few tips on avoiding boring, flashy, fast, repetitive, if clever, guitar solos:

When the singer has finished his or her couple of verses, and it is time for you to play, listen to what the band is doing; maybe they are expecting your solo, and they, especially the bass and drums, have quietened down a bit, if you are lucky, to possibly let you in?

Some simple things you might like to try, in your efforts to not-be-boring:

1) Play a few notes that the singer was singing in the previous bar.
2) Listen to the rhythm, and then play something half that speed, or double that speed, but with gaps in it.
3) Play a single noisy aggressive riff, just a couple of notes – and then let it hang in the air for a whole bar – that will make the audience, and also the other band members take notice!
4) Play a couple of notes well out of tune, then a gap, follow those with a rising, lovely, high singing note, then do that sequence again. That should get their attention!
5) Pay a riff or two high up the neck, and then do the same riff, an octave lower, down at the bottom of the neck, repeat this sequence for several minutes.
6) Fill a half bar, every second, with high speed random notes, in or out of tune, and then stop dead, and wait for the next bar, to do it again.
7) Nod at the bass player, or the harmonica player, to indicate that you two should exchange a few call-and-answer riffs between yourselves. Audiences seem to really like this sort of thing, and it also increases the length of the song nicely.
8) Slip a repeated, very well known riff, into your solo – say, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, or Louie Louie, or Roadrunner. The singer might notice it and sing a verse or two of it in the middle of your song, too.