I am a new guitar player (less than 2 years) and I am trying lo learn to play Blues and Blues-Rock from online sources.
This is a recording from a recent practice session. I would love to hear from experienced musicians/guitarists on how I can improve. Specifically
1. How do I figure out/anticipate when the rhythm will end?
2. How do I identify target notes to hit?
3. What can I do to practice hitting target notes?
I know a little theory - how basic triad chords are formed (major, minor, 7th) and a few chord progressions. So do keep in mind I might need some hand holding :-)
1. If you don't understand the from of a twelve or eight bar blues you need to. Blues is highly structured for the most part, if you understand the form and can keep track of where you are in it then you won't have any problem with knowing where a song is going. 2 and 3. Listen to lots of blues music, there aren't all that many hard and fast rules when compared to jazz, it's mostly going to be in your gut. bgood's advice to learn licks is pretty good advice, you may not be able to master so many licks starting out, but you'll find some new licks of your own. Learn more then one position to play a blues scale in. You are probably playing with your index finger rooted on the one. Figure out how to play a blues scale with your pinky finger rooted on the one. Different hand positions will lead to different licks. Learn blues scales rooted on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and sixth strings, figure out how to move from one position to another changing from index root on the sixth to pinky root on the fifth. The more dexterity you can get moving from position to position will produce a grater variety of sounds and ideas. Try to play with someone better and try to find someone to teach a basic blues scale too, jam with them. Teaching people and watching/listening to better players brings pretty good insight. Listen, Listen, Listen is probably the best way to learn about the blues. Try playing a pentatonic scale over blues cords or play a major scale with a flat 7 and toss in a flat third. These all give different textures and are used by different players. If you don't understand some of what I'm saying you probably will in the future if you stick with it.
You should be practicing playing the rhythm part and counting it, pretty soon your ear will follow it. This is almost exactly how I got started playing blues rhythm guitar as a kid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6X80uAzqFQ
A cool training method that helped me build better guitar solos was to pick a blues or jazz guitarist (in my case it was Grant Green), most of them on the blues side (SRV, Clapton, Muddy Waters, BB King etc.) have certain signature licks that pop up frequently in their songs. Pick one (they're usually over a 12 bar blues format) and learn it. Then learn more and paste them together. Before you know you have a full solo and you've figured out a lot of different places to go on the neck and you can do your own thing. It's sort of a Mr Miyagi method.
There are no such things as wrong notes. As for the rhythm ending, that's all up to you and when you want the phrase to end. Usually, phrases are multiples of 2. But you can do whatever you want really. What I like to do when I'm soloing is sing along with myself. If I can sing something melodic, it's sure to be killing regardless of what notes I hit. Remember, there are many elements to music and notes are only one of them.
hrishim, thanks for sharing this. I'm not a blues guitarist and to be completely honest, I'm not much of a lead guitar player at all. I'm a rhythm guitarist. But I think the advice anyone could give is that you ought to just do it, do it, do it and the questions you've raised will eventually answer themselves. It sounds like you have an intuition for this already and a good starting point. My advice would be to continue to learn your instrument, your "scales" and where the right "notes" are and then begin to step outside of what is "right", what is "obvious" and start to color outside of the lines a bit. That's when a guitarist(musician) starts to make their own sound. Good luck, you should post more as you progress, I'd be interested to hear your development. Good luck and have fun.