Improv over Tom Quayle’s Melodic Minor Backing
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Sean Conklin.
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Hello Guys! š
Well, I had a go at improvising over one of Tom Quayle’s Melodic Minor Tutorial Backing Tracks. It’s the one that vamps over two different chords (in two different keys) from EbMaj7 to Abm6/9 (I think?) Anyways, I came to two conclusions:
1.) I’m not very good at improvising over progressions that change key (even simple two chord vamps like this one!) š® :rolleyes: All of my years of Rock playing has been more rooted in soloing over progressions that typically stay in one key throughout, or do obvious modulations that are very easy to navigate! This is a real eye-opener for me, but I embrace the challenge! š š
2.) Tom Quayle is a pretty good guitar player…(understatement of the century! – LOL!) :p š š
So below is the link to my improv-recording. Please feel free to offer any comments, insights, constructive-criticisms, OK?
Thanks! š
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=a9c68869edf0c63875a4fc82078ae6c8e04e75f6e8ebb871
~Bill Meehan~ š
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Hey Bill,
Awesome! But when I click the link it says “0 items found to display”. Might still be going through some kind of upload process? Looking forward to hearing it!
@Sean Conklin 7905 wrote:
Hey Bill,
Awesome! But when I click the link it says “0 items found to display”. Might still be going through some kind of upload process? Looking forward to hearing it!
Hey Sean, š
I checked the link before I finalized my IG thread, so I wonder why that didn’t work??? (Perhaps I forgot to check the “share to public” box!) It should work now! š® :rolleyes:
BTW, you have to choose your download option (OPEN or SAVE) so “Open” the file to play it once or “Save to Disk” if you want to hang onto it ( although I doubt you’d want to do that! (LOL!)
Try this:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jjrykmcnncj/TQ_MM2_1.mp3
~Bill Meehan~ š
Hey Bill,
This was good. I have to say that the start was a bit boring, but you seemed to pick up the (s)pace and the end was nice. Some cool tapping (was it?)!. You know, you could have actually started off with the tapping and ended up slow! Just my thoughts.
Also, I couldn’t figure out any “style”! You know what I mean? If I just heard the solo without any backing track it would be difficult to figure out what style you were playing in.
Cheers!
Rohan @arc_of_descent 7929 wrote:
Hey Bill,
This was good. I have to say that the start was a bit boring, but you seemed to pick up the (s)pace and the end was nice. Some cool tapping (was it?)!. You know, you could have actually started off with the tapping and ended up slow! Just my thoughts.
Also, I couldn’t figure out any “style”! You know what I mean? If I just heard the solo without any backing track it would be difficult to figure out what style you were playing in.
Cheers!
RohanHey Ro, š
Thanks for listening man. I can always rely on you for some feedback! š (LOL!) Actually, I know what you mean about the “boring” start! š® š I actually had heard that melody in my head before I started, so I gave it the old Wes Montgomery-approved thumb-brushed octaves for a while, before I got going with the flatpicking/typical stuff. The reason I started so slow was because I was trying to use “space” in my phrasing more. Although there is no “right” or “wrong” when it comes to arranging/pacing/phrasing, I was intending to build into the solo starting slowly, then adding more melodic energy/excitement, and then (hopefully) climaxing to a full-on SHRED (at least as much as I’m capable of – which isn’t too much!!! – LOL!) Rick Graham pointed out to me in my previous “Minor Blues Improv” that I “rambled” and didn’t mix up my rhythmic time-values and phrasing enough, and he was spot-on with that assessment! I was telling him that I had objectively made the same “note-to-self” right after I finished it and uploaded it!. As it turned out, I think later on (after the slow octave-melodies, but before the tapping-stuff) I was guilty of the rambling lack of time-value alteration (time-value alteration is a Richard Lundmark improvisational concept, and I need to work on it
a lot more!) :rolleyes: š®All-in-all, I was mildly pleased with my result. Of course it can always be better, but I’m just trying to improve. BTW, your comment about not being able to discern an intended style actually made me VERY HAPPY! Seriously, I’ve always tried to mix-in a lot of different elements to my playing (even though I’m primarily a straight-up “rock-guy!”) so that’s a good thing for me! Also, I’ve never had the chops to be a “shredder” per se, but I love the challenge of trying to develop some amount of shred-technique and vocabulary to add excitement to my rock-improvisations! Someday…:o :rolleyes:
Thanks again for your insights & assessments Rohan. BTW, those licks at the fade-out are two-handed taps (I tried to load them up with chord tones to help spell the two chord changes, if you know what I mean!) š
~Bill Meehan~ š
Hey Bill!
I’ve just seen this and I’m downloading it now but I’m stuck on a train right now – oh the joy! š
As soon as I get a chance to check it out I’ll let you know what I think.
Hope you’re well matey!
Speak soon,
Tom
Hi Bill – I just got back and checked it out. I thought there were some great things about this improvisation and some things I’d point out as areas to work on. I thought you sounded really confident with your knowledge of both scale areas and there were VERY few points where you sounded lost at all, or unsure of what or where to play next. You certainly gave the impression that you’d nailed the changes as such. Your tone was also great and your use of effects was very fitting for the feel of the backing track- was it a POD or were you miking up a cab?
It’s interesting that you’d mentioned above about space in your solo. Your phrasing started off really nicely with lots of space – I could almost hear you thinking and listening to your phrases! As the track progressed though, the space got less and less as your phrases became longer and longer. I remember listening back to a jazz duo gig I played back in 2001 about three hours after playing and being appalled at the lack of space in my phrasing! I think from about 1:07 to about 1:42 in your track, there isn’t a single point where you rested and used silence – you hold notes for sure but there’s no silence at all! I was the worst for this a few years back but listening to my solos made me far more conscious of it. I think when you concentrate so hard on making a set of changes, a by-product of that can be that your phrasing suffers as you want to make sure you play the right notes sometimes at the expense of playing simple concise phrases. I’d thoroughly recommend a motif based approach where you find a short phrase and play it sequentially through the changes, modifying only the notes necessary to fit the scale/chord in question but keeping much of the phrasing the same. Doing this exercise definitely helps changes playing and phrasing THROUGH changes.
The final thing which ties in with the above (and is a symptom of changes playing!) is that rhythmically, the majority of the solo was 8th note based with the need for more variation. (I see that you’d noted this yourself anyway.) Again, taking a more motif based approach or by limiting yourself to just a small area of the neck you should find that you can start to develop a more rhythmically creative approach.
Overall though I though this was a great and confident improvisation and I’d love to hear more as you develop this aspect of your playing!
Best of luck Bill – let me know your thoughts!
All the best dude!
Tom
@Tom Quayle 7977 wrote:
Hi Bill – I just got back and checked it out.
It’s interesting that you’d mentioned above about space in your solo. Your phrasing started off really nicely with lots of space – I could almost hear you thinking and listening to your phrases! As the track progressed though, the space got less and less as your phrases became longer and longer. I remember listening back to a jazz duo gig I played back in 2001 about three hours after playing and being appalled at the lack of space in my phrasing! I think from about 1:07 to about 1:42 in your track, there isn’t a single point where you rested and used silence – you hold notes for sure but there’s no silence at all! I was the worst for this a few years back but listening to my solos made me far more conscious of it. I think when you concentrate so hard on making a set of changes, a by-product of that can be that your phrasing suffers as you want to make sure you play the right notes sometimes at the expense of playing simple concise phrases. I’d thoroughly recommend a motif based approach where you find a short phrase and play it sequentially through the changes, modifying only the notes necessary to fit the scale/chord in question but keeping much of the phrasing the same. Doing this exercise definitely helps changes playing and phrasing THROUGH changes.The final thing which ties in with the above (and is a symptom of changes playing!) is that rhythmically, the majority of the solo was 8th note based with the need for more variation. (I see that you’d noted this yourself anyway.) Again, taking a more motif based approach or by limiting yourself to just a small area of the neck you should find that you can start to develop a more rhythmically creative approach.
Overall though I though this was a great and confident improvisation and I’d love to hear more as you develop this aspect of your playing!
Best of luck Bill – let me know your thoughts!
All the best dude!
Tom
Hey Tom, š
Thanks for your feedback! š I couldn’t agree more with your assesment BTW! (If you check out what I said to Rohan’s reply, I basically said as much regarding the section between the opening Wes-like octave-melodies and the sextuplet taps that I faded out on. The problem is, that’s quite a long period of time to blabber-on without breathing (not too surprisingly, I think my threads/written replies here at IG suffer a similar fate! LOL!) Anyways, you’re so right, and I’ll try to improve this in future improvs. Remember, I do two gigs regularly (not including teaching!) and in one band I play note-for-note renditions of Tool songs (NO improv!) and the other band is a classic-to-modern rock cover band where I might improvise for about 10% of the night, and the rest is note-for-note or close to it! So clearly this is an area where I’m sorely lacking! š® However, that’s why I’m doing this (plus I’ve never attempted any of this Melodic Minor/Fusiony stuff, so there’s a lot of new ground for me here!) I definitely overdid the eighth-notes too! Ya know, that tempo is a bit of a “tweener” for me, cuz, although I can play sixteenths at around 130, it would probably need to be a familiar lick or sequence or something. I think (like you said!) that I was so concentrating on the changes, that I forgot about the rhythmic variation (Lundmark would crucify me if he gave me an honest assessment…and he’d be right!) š® š®
Anyways, thanks again for your honesty and detailed remarks (BTW, these are very similar to what Rick Graham said about my improv. over your Minor Blues backing a couple months back, so you guys are consistent and spot-on with your constructive-criticism!!!) š
PS: It was a PODXT-Live on an 18-Watt Brit/Marshall combo model with a little tape-delay in the first half, then half-way through, I kicked-on a Rat-pedal model and the faux-leslie rotary model! Good ear Tom! Oh and it was a 27-year-old $145. Ibanez Roadstar! I have several nicer guitars, so don’t ask me why that, I just happened to be playing it that day. I’m whimsical like that!!! :rolleyes: …..BTW, my phrasing shortcomings had nothing to do with my odd/cheap choice of instruments….NO EXCUSES! (LOL!) š®
TTYS!
~Bill Meehan~ š
Thanks for the second link Bill.
Cool stuff! I really liked the first minute especially. It did seem to get repetitive after that though with the scale runs and 8th note phrasing. I did like that legato run you were doing at the end there. Tastiness.
Thanks for sharing Bill and keep it up!
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