Bending Lead

I think I've mentioned the pentatonic scales.  If you want a definition, you'll have to look it up.  But I have been practicing them and though I'm not very fast I've gotten some faster.  More importantly, however, is practicing the down and up string strum technique.

Stringstrumstringstrumstringstrum.  Hahaha!!  That's hard to say.

Anyway, John wanted me to practice listening to the relationship between the notes so he could start teaching me "lead."  Now, the nephew Conner, achieves this seemingly without effort.  He's all up and down the scales, bending strings and filling in the blanks with good licks.  Me?  Not so much.  Again, I will attribute this to the difference between a "musician" (that would be Conner) and a "technician" (that would be me.)

Eric Johnson

Knowing what a fan of Eric Johnson I am, John told me that he plays a lot of his leads in these scales so that afternoon as I chopped vegetables with the stereo on in the background I was able to hear EJ playing lead within those scales and I thought, Cool.  It's sort of the way a writer begins to read differently because they're not only reading the story, they are also able to pick out particularly good or bad writing.

I recorded myself playing a blues phrase over and over and then played it back to practice lead scales on, but I didn't feel I was very successful and honestly, the whole idea doesn't interest me that much to begin with.  I'll leave that to the true musicians.  I can bend strings pretty well, but my rhythm-deficiency limits my success with that too.

I am, however, making some progress with "Johnny B. Goode."  The epiphany I had while writing a previous post of this blog related to the string-strum method mentioned above.  The last three notes of the second bar (and the same phrase thereafter) were being executed neither with rhythm nor skill.  And then I realized I should be strumming down and up instead of just down.  It's made a lot of difference.  I'm still not very good at it, but it's coming along.

Chuck Berry

I also changed picks for "Johnny B. Goode."  I looked for my Joe Bonamassa picks because I knew they were small and heavy but I only found one.  WTH?  I know I gave Conner some, but did I have to give him nearly all of them?  Sheesh!