You’re the top dog, with master chops. You can play blues guitar licks faster than a speeding bullet. If your fingers could get a speeding ticket, you would be driving without a license. Simply put, you got fast chops and you know it.
Now before I go on, this post is not about every single guitarist, but about some that I have noticed while being on the music scene and will not apply to everybody.
We want it now!
Everybody wants fast nowadays. We want our food fast, our internet fast, our shipping fast, and pretty much anything we can get our hands on, fast.
Stated bluntly, we want it fast and we want it now!
Now I agree, and I like everything fast just as much as the next person. With the internet, anyone can find anything they want or need at the touch of a button. People in general including myself have no patience anymore. I get on 285 and don’t go 20 miles over the speed limit and people are flipping me off! People are in a hurry and don’t want to wait.
If we go to a website and it doesn’t load within 3-5 seconds, we are yelling at the computer saying why this piece of crap won’t run!
The exact opposite is how we need to approach our blues guitar playing. Fast and now = not good blues guitar. There are exceptions, although as a general rule I will say that less is more has never been more apparent than when you are playing the blues. Mixing in some fast notes when playing the blues is fine, but you must slow down at some point or all the feeling is lost. Don’t try to play for the respect of musicians, play from the struggles and pain that have got you where you are in this life. 5 notes played from the soul, will outdo 100 from the hip any day in my book.
I find myself always trying to play a less is more approach. I think it sounds better and conveys more emotion. I’ve done a little test to prove this point, but there are certain factors that may also come into play that I can’t know for certain.
I released 2 YouTube videos and and tracked the attention span of them.
First this video:
Here’s the attention span:
Now the slow BB Lesson:
Here’s the attention span:
It’s obvious which one more people are into, but the BB King video gets a lot of positive comments, emails, and Gibson put it on their front page of the lessons section recently.
So what does this mean?
Well it’s hard to say, but from one perspective it shows that people only want to learn fast distorted blues licks, which is good, but you’ll need more than that to survive on stage at a blues gig. Those speedy blues licks will only go so far, and without something of substance added in, they’re not going to stand out at all after the first couple of tunes.
It could also mean that the people learning the licks, already know how to do the easier lessons, but there’s no way to tell for certain. All I can tell you is that for you to sound good playing the blues, learn a handful of slow melodic, but powerful and emotional licks. Use these in your blues guitar solos and I guarantee you will do fine. You can then add some speed as you get comfortable. Used sparingly, fast blues licks are amazing, but used all the time can create quite a boring solo in my opinion.
Have an opinion? Let me know what your experience has been below.
For more blues guitar and slide guitar lessons please visit Learning Guitar Now.
Excellent article. Thanks for posting. I wonder if it has more to do with people’s perceptions of their own ability. They ASSUME they can just play the slow material and so there is no need to explore it further. They never consider proper finger placement on the fingerboard, good picking, TONE!!!
Excellent post. I couldn’t agree more… I’m not a teacher nor a pro but if I had to give an extra-opinion on this I would add thatwhether you slow or fast, timing and rhythm are very important. Most of the time all the great guitarists we listen to, and enjoy have have awesome rhythm skills and sense of timing…
Thanks for the comments guys! Pitch and vibrato become very crucial when playing a slow blues. If you’re not dead on, everyone will hear it.
excellent post John. Myself, I an tired of fast lane this fast lane that fast lane everything. Crap in the Tech industry they call it FAST Trak. Not for me. Same thing in music and the emotional side of it, really fast emotes anger, pentup emotions, rage. Slow emotes, tender, desire, heart felt emotions. Now up tempo is different, to me this emotes happiness, eager, adventure etc.
In your post you mention the road into the City. That drives me crazy. I stay out of cities altogether because of stuff like that. I think it all comes from the way society has changed in the US to an instant gratification socieity. That type of emotion carries into and influences everything in life.
What ever happened to ‘don’t worry, be happy’?
SAR
ps. I live in NE OK byt the lake and there is one traffic signal in a 20 mile radius. Peaceful, laid back, and energizing.
Thanks for the comment Steve.
Yeah I live in Decatur Ga on a dead end road, so it’s really quiet around here. Buckhead is another story though.
By the lake sounds great.
Benny Turner (Freddie King’s half brother & long time bassist) commented on this subject in an excerpt from August 1995 Guitar Player: “He [Freddie King] had a tendency to have the white kids follow him early on. Guys like Ted Nugent would get on the stage with Freddie King and try to outplay him. They’d run about a thousand notes within 12 bars, and Freddie would come out and throw those two notes in there and just kill ’em! They don’t realize it ain’t how many notes you can play, it’s what you can do with them.”
Thanks for the comment. Freddie had some killer licks for sure. I really love the Burglar album.
John,
This concept of fast vs what ever has inspired my comment. You are really tuned in to the sensibilities of tasteful playing and that is why I have purchased your products and follow your podacast and lessons. Your little 1966 vibrolux demo is one of the sweetest little blues solos out there. I listen to it often and show it to any guitar buddies I know. Your style of tempting us out here with little manageable licks is a great way of drawing us in to a comminity of musicians not wanting to impress anyone but themselves at their own progress. Small amps with great tone expressing real emotion. Some of the lessons seem to easy and some way scary but we are all at different places in our music. The longer pieces require more support your break downs help us tackle the craft & your focus and encouragement helps us put out the effort. Keep the quality coming. Very good to keep reviewing up to this point we covered this and play it again slowly – it works great – thanks
Thanks a lot! I appreciate the comment and that you have enjoyed the lessons. I try to offer up the lessons that I wanted to see when I was learning. Hopefully they have helped steer people in the right direction when learning the blues and slide guitar.