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The pieces Brian has composed are just terrific, but always rather short as he wants to teach us how they are built but not to give us a long piece to learn. In a ‘regular’ song, parts are repeated (verse, chorus, verse, ,…). I would like to do this as well with Brian’s pieces to stick longer to one of the compositions., However, they all have a clear end from which you cannot just jump back to the first bar. Jumping back one bar earlier or jumping to the second bar does not work either. Obviously, my improvising skills are too underdeveloped to find a solution. Examples I am working at are EP177 or EP501.
How do I have to modify a turnaround (or the first bar when returning) so that it sounds good? Are there ‘rules’/recommendations what should be altered or omitted?
Best
Rudi -
Hi Rudibert,
Great question and I think you will find your answer in the huge log of site member challenge submissions as well as in the Showcase Your Playing” forum section. Many of us here love to do exactly what you described and there are many varieties of the lessons’ extensions or second verses. There are even members who write songs based off Brian’s lessons.
There’s a forum section „Site Member Challenge Responses Consolidated” where you will find many examples of those. I remember recording EP501 with a second verse myself, and I’ve done many other lessons with added verses. I think most of us who showcase our playing or participate in the monthly challenges do that often, it’s a great learning opportunity.
If a lesson has a definite ending, I usually either skip the outro and start a new verse or modify it to lead into the second verse. However, most of the classic blues turnarounds could serve as either turnarounds or endings or even the beginning of a song.
🎸JoLa
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You’re not the first to ask this question. This all comes down to song construction. In many cases, you will see what are called pickup bars before the main repeating part begins. First identify exactly which bars are the pickup bars (if any). Then as you found out, the ending has to be skipped and go to the first bar after the pick up bars. As you get more skilled, you can create variations of certain bars.
So using EP501, the first bar is the pickup bar. That means when we go to do a repeat, bar 2 is where you start the repeat and it essentially becomes the new bar 16.
Bars 16 & 17 get moved to 30 & 31. On the first go around, you must skip over those last two bars and go directly to bar 2. Hope that makes sense.
Edit: After looking at it again. I would change bar 2 so it was up in the 7th fret area (D-Shape or C-Shape) form of G chord. That way there is no need to go all the way back down to the lower frets.
Root note patterns >>> CAGED shapes >>> TRIAD'S. Just put in the work and watch your guitar skills soar.
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Years ago we briefly had some “Second Verse” challenges, but they never caught on. So those of us who can compose 2nd verses just kept on quietly doing it, and all those masterpieces are now just lost in the buried vaults of time.
Sunjamr Steve
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This would be a great lesson in and of itself for Brian to go over again. I swear I remember him discussing it before, but a more in depth lesson on how to practically do it using multiple examples of his own compositions.
I remember EP583 was a good example of Brian creating a whole second part to his original ML086 Acoustic Country Blues. That was and still is a great composition. If you look at the original part, you will see that he simply cut off the tag line at the end of the first composition at bar 22 and inserted the new second part starting at the E chord (might be 2nd bar of E). But you could simply repeat the whole first composition starting at bar 2 or make up a slightly different bar 2 to lead into B7.
It’s really not too hard to do, but I can see how many might be confused as to where the cut off is for the ending tag line.
Root note patterns >>> CAGED shapes >>> TRIAD'S. Just put in the work and watch your guitar skills soar.
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OK, here’s one I just remembered: When Brian was doing an “in the style of” lesson on Muddy Waters, he did it first as Lesson EP213, then the following week he put out EP214 which was a 2nd verse that could be added onto EP213. And I think he may have done something similar a few other times, and maybe I’ll remember them in a few more days.
But also, I remember that when some of us were focusing on making 2nd verses, I learned a lot about music composition and it boosted my ability significantly. That’s why it surprised me that not many AM members decided to give it a try. I wonder if we should start a Forum Topic just for Second Verse Compositions.
Also, I don’t remember ever having a Monthly Challenge goal to “create a second verse for Lesson ____”
Sunjamr Steve
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Great advice above. I think when you spend time analyzing and dissecting songs you’ll see patterns and get better at this. But it’s 100% doable and I do this all the time!
First you decide what kind of form you’re dealing with (12 bar blues, 32 bar blues, A/B form, etc.) Then you see if you have any intro/outro material to trim. Sometimes you’ll even have to drop additional notes if there’s a pickup at the beginning. Final step is to see if you need to alter the ending to get back to the top (most obvious choice is adding a 5 chord.)
In your examples:
501: this song is a 16 bar form. Measure one is a pickup. So the repeat goes back to measure one, but there’s a bit of pickup lick on the “and” of 3 and 4. Last measure could sub the 5 chord (D7) on beat 3 and then hit that pickup lick to return to measure 2.177: measure one is the intro, and on the repeat you’ll want to go back to measure 2. Then on the last measure I’d sub a B7 (the 5 chord) for that E7. I might even alter beats 1 and 2 on that last measure to better lead up to the B (like a chromatic run.)
Happy to take a crack at other examples! Feel free to PM me 🙂
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I wonder if we should start a Forum Topic just for Second Verse Compositions.
I like this idea a lot. I’m no expert at doing this, so I would love to see other members take on it.
Alan L has some really good suggestions in his above post that I didn’t consider, but there should be a general formula for extending any short composition if you can identify the pieces of the songs structure.
Also any good video’s on this topic would be nice to lay out in the thread as well.
Root note patterns >>> CAGED shapes >>> TRIAD'S. Just put in the work and watch your guitar skills soar.
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Lots of great ideas for playing extensions to lessons , I agree with jola there is a lot of information in the challenge videos as a lot of us have done this many times .
I find a the lesson itself has so many ideas already in it maybe play in the same areas and alter Brian’s licks and make them your own , each and every lesson is an absolute gold mine for ideas and inspiration if you really dive into it and more often than not Brian will add little side notes to explore , here is one of Ep 381 that I did for challenge a few years back playing the lesson then adding another pass I thought it went quite well .
Martin
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That was a really good one there Martin. You actually did change some of the licks in that second part. That example is probably the easiest to repeat if someone didn’t have the skills to improvise yet as they could simply go right to the end and start again at the beginning without changing a thing.
The more difficult parts to repeat have the intro’s pickup bars and tag lines in them.
Root note patterns >>> CAGED shapes >>> TRIAD'S. Just put in the work and watch your guitar skills soar.
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One easy option which can be added to most tunes or songs is a simple Vamp. This can be a short sequence you can simply make up from some of the chords of the tune. You can then use this as an Intro, Middle and Outro to Brian’s original lesson.
If you’re not yet at the stage of improvising a whole verse you can play Brian’s original twice round with the Vamp interspersed where you feel a break or contrast to the main melody is needed.Richard
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