Okay, my turn... previous lesson is 3 months old, already 😰
(🦥-mode)

I must apologize, this one got too long. Way too long! And I am glad I didn't add lesson 9 to this. Actually, I thought lesson 8 contains too little stuff to make a recording. Well - okay, it is really not that much, I played the same over and over again. Call it noodling. And of course this one contains a lotta mistakes: wrong notes, messing up with the rhythm, and more. Anyway, it is time to move one, I was strolling around with this lesson for too long.

This lesson does not contain complete licks, it provides only chunks. Meaning smaller parts, maybe only 2 bars, sometimes 4. And it is up to the students to connect them. Well - I just played them in about the same order as Christian was teaching them, not able to add lots of variety.

Get a big cup of tea - or coffee - lean back and enjoy 🙂

    WieWaldi Eight minutes of great sounding improvised licks, jamming, and runs! Great job WieWaldi, it sounds awesome!!!

    Your playing is smooth and steady, and you do a great job of putting all the pieces together in interesting ways. I also really like the way you leave space between licks. That lets me appreciate the preceding lick while anticipating the next one.

    You made a lego town!

        rogerch Thanks, roger. This means a lot of me when you are saying so.

          WieWaldi wow... that's some impressive noodling. It is eight minutes! I also think your lick blends well with others.

              hebele Thank you. I guess you should have recognized already some patterns. In a slightly different way maybe. In your last lesson you learned the royal thirds (I think), I played them over and over again - but with variations in rhythm.
              And I am sure, Sophia will recognize more stuff from the lessons she learnt so far.
              Bottom line - it sounds all like Christians.

                rogerch You made a lego town!

                Haha, this lego town feels like this, feels like copy&paste of simple houses over and over again.

                Anyway - it is a start to improvising.

                  Woweeee, just listened to your eight minutes of smooth blues. You named yourself wrong after all - Waldi move over, Wie Bluesi is in town! Lovely! Rock solid left hand, and I loved your own created lick. Everything fit so well together and I'm deeply impressed with 8 solid minutes of almost flawless playing.

                  I only have one little tip, is that okay? I know the lesson probably called for the "humpty dumpty" left hand lick. And, it's an okay lick, nothing wrong with it. But after about a minute I was hoping for a little variation... and it didn't come. The right hand, smooth, suave, lovely... not too many repeats. But the left hand... oh my goodness, 8 minutes of sameness was a little much and in the end I started feeling a little like Mr Tick Tock Crocodile

                  But honestly, that is only a minor, MINOR nitpick and probably not even fair, for a lesson. But... maybe you can come up with a left hand variation 😂

                    WieWaldi That was awesome WieWie! 🤩 The whole thing was smoothly played and the fact that you included some of your own improvisations made it all the more impressive! I barely noticed any mistakes, but I would say that I was not keen on the ending; partly because it didn't quite seem to fit with what had gone before, but partly because it was the ending to such an enjoyable performance! You truly are the BBK - Bavarian Blues King! 👑

                    @hebele I just listened to your recent blues recording - very nicely done! I think you have a real feel for the blues, you maintained the swing rhythm throughout the piece. Keep going, you're on the right track! 🙂

                    "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                        WieWaldi I just watched it again - it was definitely worth a second viewing! I love the scale run which starts at 5.21, but I also noticed something - I think perhaps this video has been edited a couple of times - around 5.26 and 7.44? Not that it matters, but it shows you were enjoying yourself so much you ended up with a marathon performance that you chose to reduce a little. 🙂

                        "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                            Sophia ... "humpty dumpty" left hand ... ...But after about a minute I was hoping for a little variation... and it didn't come.

                            Sorry about that. I was really busy thinking about my right hand only. This and switching from C to F and C to G. And keeping the rhythm as good as possible.
                            This are already three things in multitasking:
                            ........(right hand👇 ,ryhthm👇 ,CFG👇)

                            You see, there isn't no more room to do something else on the fly. 🤥

                            Okay, next lesson contains two more left hands, additional to the humptee dumptee one.😇

                                • Sophia

                                • Post #681
                                • Edited

                                WieWaldi You see, there isn't no more room to do something else on the fly

                                Heh, I hear you... and it was a little unfair of me. After all, I know now how difficult it is to keep that left hand steady while the right hand makes all those variations. There is little room for more!

                                Funny enough I just started the next section of my "Peter Gunn" lesson. And I was bouncing up and down in frustration... I FINALLY managed to play the second lick fairly smoothly (still rough at the chord changes). You remember, the one with the blinking stars to look ahead. So proud... let's start the next lick. WHAT THE BL...Y H...L? Different left hand, different rhythm AND the right hand needs to learn something new as well? Sometimes I think he enjoys torturing us...

                                    Nightowl I think perhaps this video has been edited a couple of times - around 5.26 and 7.44?

                                    No, I didn't do any video editing except moving the camera. What you heard is me adapting to the metronome. If you look carefully, you can see the bottom of a smartphone on the music rest (lightblue hull). It runs a metronome app with loud tic-toc-toc-toc. I can hear it through my headphones; but it is not recorded for the video. The metronome was running to prevent me speeding up. But I did a few times, and then had to slow down. This are exactly the moments you pointed out. Same happened at the very beginning. My tempo was very unsteady, the first bars. Good ear 👂👍

                                    Nightowl but I would say that I was not keen on the ending; partly because it didn't quite seem to fit with what had gone before

                                    So you didn't like my ending? eh? 😡
                                    Joking aside - I don't like it either. The recording at that place is awful. But I wanted to finish the lesson and I didn't want to play again a 8 minute humptee dumptee left hand (Sophia is so right about that, sigh). Honestly, you are absolutely right, the ending was crap. I played it at the beginning of a 12-bar pattern, but it needs to be placed at bar 10 of 12 to sound good. This speaks for you, Nightowl. You are developing an ear for blues and how it should sound.😎

                                    If you find anything you don't like, please tell me. Don't be afraid to criticize me just because I started 3 years earlier. If you think, something sounds wrong, then something is wrong. Or like a friend of me said: "You don't need to be a chicken to know when an egg is bad".

                                    @Nightowl & @Sophia Thank you for your kind words and triple thank you for being honest!❤️

                                          Sophia Oh yes. Every time there is a new LH, I spent about 50% of my lesson learning time for the LH only. To make it fluid and automatic. I start isolated LH for a few minutes, then I play the RH "warmup-lick" together with the new LH all the time until it becomes autopilot. And then - and then - and then I play the next lick and feel like a toddler again with my LH. 😭

                                          I feel with you 😢

                                              WieWaldi "You don't need to be a chicken to know when an egg is bad"

                                              You hear that, Nightowl???? He's calling us too chicken to admit we're bad eggs. Some people 🥶 Dont worry - our revenge will be sweet! 😱

                                              Ok, enough teasing.

                                              WieWaldi Good ear 👂👍 (...) You are developing an ear for blues and how it should sound.😎

                                              YES! I always said she has a very good ear for rhythm and harmony. So lucky to be musical... and she has the nerve to talk about MY musical jeans! She should look in the mirror!

                                              Whoops, that was more teasing.

                                              Ok, teasing really over now.

                                              WieWaldi I play the next lick and feel like a toddler again with my LH.

                                              Exactly! I found that with my current lesson too. I started with just the LH and it was easy enough. Added the RH blues scale - whoa, that was hard... but ok, after two days it's going smoothly. I got this hand independence thing, no problem! Yeah, until I add a very miniscule new variation, and the LH is completely out of whack again. Rinse, repeat.

                                              I'm a long, long way from true improvisation, because I still need need to spend a lot of time mastering each small change before it sounds smooth. It was so nice to hear your 8 minutes of true (ok, almost) improvisation. I didn't see you use any notes or turn a page etc, which tells me that you are really getting to that stage now. Even though I suspect you still need to spend a little time getting each new lick into your fingers, right?

                                                      Sophia Even though I suspect you still need to spend a little time getting each new lick into your fingers, right?

                                                      absolutely

                                                        WieWaldi No, I didn't do any video editing except moving the camera.

                                                        So, do you mean you stopped playing and recording, then moved the camera, then started playing/recording again? I noticed the camera angles changed but thought maybe you had two cameras set up. I heard slight variations in tempo, but it was the different camera positions that really caught my attention.

                                                        "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                                                            Nightowl No, I use only one camera. My camera is on a fixed tripod and I film in good quality 4k (3840x2160). Then I tell my video software to slowly zoom in for some time (and pan a bit). Then I go back to total view and repeat. This is not that much of work, but let the video look nice. And indeed, the attention intension is to make it look like a multicam setup. 😇

                                                            Edit: bad English🙄

                                                              9 days later

                                                              From classical to blues, yeah, baby! Here it is, Easy Blues lesson 2. This one was quite a bit shorter than the first lesson and my concentration wasn't as thoroughly shattered, so it didn't take as long to learn. Sorry about the bonks and thumps, I was too lazy to clean up the sound 😃

                                                                Sophia This piece seems a bit disjointed - the first minute is a bit dull and seems to go nowhere, but around the 1.10 mark there is a nice note run before it morphs into a new piece completely. That said, it's a blues lesson rather than a named piece, so that's probably why it doesn't follow the usual format of the short classical/folk melody pieces I'm used to playing from the method books. Anyway, it's another lesson under your belt. 🙂

                                                                "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars." (Final line from Now,Voyager, 1942)

                                                                  Ooooh yes, I was thinking exactly the same.... the pieces just don't add up. I actually left out the first "lick" which was that left hand pattern combined with the blues scale. YUCK, my poor ears. I agree with you all the way - the "mother of all turnarounds" didn't quite fit in the piece and I tried to stretch it out a little to try and tie the "rigid" pattern with the "jazzy" one. I think you are right that this is not a single piece, it's just individual exercises. 👍🏼

                                                                  Yup, another lesson done 😃 I think I'll tackle one of the eight pieces next, that should be fun!