Greetings Guitar Slingers!
In this lesson, we will take a close look a song I call Super Continental. Not only will this serve as a good insight into my playing style, but will also be a good challenge for you both technically, rhythmically and theoretically. The real challenge in this tutorial is not primarily technical, but lies in the advanced rhythmical application throughout.
If you find some of the note value alterations, or techniques of this lesson too hard, please back up and go through mine and other teacher’s lessons on technique and timing/note value. You will need all your spades in the deck for this one!
I will also analyze parts of this song that I think highlight important aspects of my guitar playing, but also aspects that are crucial learnings in general. A note here is that all my solos are always straight improvisations, or have been grown out of improvisations. In my style of music, I do not believe in sitting down and composing a solo note by note. That is of course an excellent way of producing a solo in certain musical styles.
One of the all time best exercises and learnings you can get, is to sit down and transcribe improvisations, your own and others. It was not until I regularly started to transcribe my own improvisations for my students, that I really started to have a full understanding of my own playing, and see what my strengths and weaknesses were.
After the analyzed parts, the rest of the song should hold no surprises for you. Just keep at it, and as I always point out, I wish that you will be able to take ANY of these lines or ideas, and play them in any key, in any scale, and most importantly with ANY note value alteration.
But enough with the chit chat, let dive head-long into the analysis part!
Good luck, and until the next time, keep you groove on! /Richard