- This topic has 26 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 7 months ago by .
-
Topic
-
Is anyone thinking about the Sept 2020 Challenge yet? I just started messing around with it a bit today, and found it more difficult than I expected. It requires fairly fast thinking to be able to jump in at the right time, and I’m not famous for fast thinking. I decided to go ahead and import the jamtrack into my DAW and map out the chord arrangement. The first thing I found is that the DAW considers it to be 120 BPM, so if you take each beat of the count-in to be one beat of the song, that means it is actually a 24-bar blues. And I found it easier to count out the timing in my head that way. Brian starts off playing solo for 2 bars while I play rhythm, then it’s my turn to do a 2-bar solo while he plays rhythm. Etc etc. Here’s a screen shot of my DAW:
The blue track is the jamtrack. In the arrangement area I color coded the A chord as red, D as yellow, and E as blue. That way I can watch the playhead while I’m playing and it lets me know when the chord change is coming up. Then I looped it (the gold bar at the top) and just started trying to play along with it. Some of Brian’s solos come in off-beat, which tended to mess up my rhythm, so I turned on the metronome (the purple icon at the upper right). That gave me a steady beat to follow when it was my turn to play rhythm.
I haven’t developed a game plan for my solo licks yet. Really they are just mini-licks, since you’ve only got a few seconds to do your thing, then it’s back to the rhythm. Ideally, I’ll listen to Brian’s licks and try to mirror them with something slightly different, or that complements them. Right now I’m just in panic mode when it’s my turn to do a solo lick. I think the key here will be to put in some time just noodling around with it until it’s burned into my brain.
How about you?
Sunjamr Steve
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.