Thinking about the Sept 2020 Challenge

[sunjamr]

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

[Denise]

Same with me, when I put the jam track into Ableton I was shocked about the 120 bpm and immediately slowed it down to 100 to excercice.
The short time for chords and licks are THE challenge. I haven’t found out yet how I can colour the chord sections but will just count the bars. For me as beginner it is too high level to “respond” to Brian’s licks but try to do my own “mirroring”. I will have to learn my licks in and out.
Denise

More Blues!

[Alan K]

Hey Steve. I don’t get as specific about the tempo as some of you. I can slow it down on my DAW but I basically just go by feel. I have my 12 bars written and am trying to get them full speed and clean. What I did do is jump back into EP312 and learn EP313 (part of the blues phrasing mini course). I used this challenge to practice blending the major and minor pentatonics and playing the chord changes. I’m not concerned about mirroring Brian’s style exactly. I’m just going to do my thing and have fun. The spirit of this challenge is just to jam with Brian.

[sunjamr]

Good idea to review EP312/313. And I also have found that either major or minor pent works, so swapping them around could be good. But the point of the challenge is to take turns playing rhythm and lead. If I play lead at the same time as Brian plays lead, that’s apparently against the rules.

Sunjamr Steve

[Alan K]

I’m trading off with him. He gets his 12 licks (6 done 2x) and I alternate with my 12. Getting up to speed will be tricky. That’s why I am starting early. I’m confident what ever you come up with will be top notch.

[Call me Al]

It’s definitely challenging. It appears to be a jump or swing blues. These usually have a quick tempo. Brian’s calls are quite busy, so to me the response needs to be less busy to let it breathe a bit. When I watch Brian’s example, his responses are less busy than his calls. The response phrases we are adding are therefore going to be quite short.

[Billy]

Forgot all about it tbh, suppose i best go see what its all about as it might well be a challenge that interests me.

..Billy..

[Billy]

Not a lot of breathing space on that eh…I can see a lot of tied twisted fingers and tears before bedtime with this one hahaha

..Billy..

[Garry]

Yeah. Challenge is definitely transitioning cleanly from rhythm to two bar fills and back. Also to make responses relevant and interesting. There’ll be plenty of practise going into this one!

[Tremelow]

I haven’t worked much on it yet, but had planned to do so tonight. What I can say is that a) I will not even try to cram any overly complicated licks into my response time and b) will experiment a little with alternate chords for the call-sequences. But if I get too much fret buzz and weird tones by playing say 11 or 13 chords or whatever I may try, then I will keep it simple and play a relaxed virtual jam session with Brian. Nothing fancy but fun.
By the way, I like how you colored the bars. I will try to do that in Reaper.
Also: If anybody has the right bpm, I would appreciate if you could post it. Thanks.

[Billy]

..Billy..

[Tremelow]

Thanks Billy!

[kubrider]

Not sure I’ll make it to the party this month but gave a listen. Is it possible it’s a slow blues in 12/8 time? 🤔 Count 123 223 323 423. Therefore it’s 60 bpm?
Rob

[sunjamr]

Yeh, I tried considering it to be 60BPM, and it works if you just count “1, and, 2, and” etc in your head. But when it came to playing along, I found it easier to just count it as 120BPM, and therefore 24 bars long.

Sunjamr Steve

[kubrider]

Hummmm, listening again Brian does count it in. Using that it probably is more like 120. Oh goodness. 🤪
Rob

[Andy N]

From Brian’s description of the intro being a measure or two, I’d expected the BPM to be about 60 but found the count in on the Jam Track to be 120bpm as well. So, I came to a similar conclusion as you Steve, that it was best to treat this as alternating 2 bars each over a 24 bar blues. But its a mighty tough challenge this month! I think the trick will be to listen to the backing track a lot and try to get into the feel of it.

[Sal]

Just going to pop a cold one,and listen to all the fun!!

[Billy]

Great idea, hold the bus til i grab a guinness…

..Billy..

[sunjamr]

Hahaha, I think you mean “listen to all the chaos”.

Sunjamr Steve

[John H]

Steve,
Without reading and of the responses to your post, let me say that I agree wholeheartedly. I am struggling with this in a big way. Not quite sure. Maybe it’s because the arrangement requires an immediate rapid fire response all the while having to switch from soloing to rhythm. I have made three attempts at trying to put something worth hearing together and man, it ain’t happening. Maybe too it’s a bit foreign to my style…. keep on pluggin’!

JH

[Billy]

I think the trick to get a grip on this one would be to work out your solo out 1st off, do a few bars of the chords to build your own backing track which you can work out a solo over then work the chords in as a pause in the solo.
Im sure Brian posted the chords being A7, D9 and E9..so possibly a way to giving some breathing space before getting up to Brians tempo?.

..Billy..

[Canada Moose]

sunjamr wrote:

… the DAW considers it to be 120 BPM,

My DAW (Garageband) considers everything to be 120 bpm. That’s it’s default setting; it doesn’t “read” the bpm of any imported tracks. Unless it does and I don’t know how to work it properly; which is highly possible. Anyone Garageband users here who knows how to make it read the bpm of imports?

[sunjamr]

Logic Pro (the big brother of GarageBand) has a BPM counter included. If you click to open it, a small window opens and it does a real-time analysis of the BPM. It’s quite interesting to watch, because if you import some songs by well-known bands, you can see the tempo drifting around as the band plays slightly faster or slower. Yes, the default tempo is 120. But you can change the tempo, then choose to force imported jamtracks to match that tempo. It’s easy in Logic. I suspect you can do the same thing in GarageBand.

Sunjamr Steve

[sunjamr]

Also, if you spend $10 or so and buy the Anytune app, it analyzes and displays the BPM. It’s also super easy to change the tempo and pitch of any jamtrack or song. Using Anytune, you can slow down a jamtrack to your liking, then export the slowed down version as an MP3, and then import it into GarageBand. That’s one way of doing it.

Sunjamr Steve

[Peter A]

Here’s what I figure:
BPM 120
Intro 4 bars
2 x 24 bars
The 24 bars are (4 bars each): A / A / D9 / A / E9 / A
For each of the 4 bars (except for the intro, I will play rhythm for the first 2 bars (while Brian plays solo), the next two bars, I play solo, Brian plays rhythm. This means I always solo over the chord I just played.
In my DAW, Audacity it looks like this (attached picture) with some label tracks to help.

Not sure I will actually do it, depends on my progress, but working it out is fun 😉

Peter

[Peter A]

BTW, here’s a way to calculate the BPM:
Measure the duration of the 4 beats of the count in.
In this case it is exactly 2.00 seconds.
So 4 beats / 2 seconds. Multiply by 30 to get to a minute.
120 beats / 60 seconds = 120 BPM.

Peter

[Dieter]

Yes, it’s really heavy stuff. I’m not able to improvise so fast, so I “compose” measure for measure with help of Guitar pro, Riff Station and my old analog Zoom recorder to control each result. I’s a “long and winding road”.

Dieter

[Author]

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