I downloaded the free trial Guitar Pro 7.5 and after one week of experimenting I want to give a short feedback:

It’s definitely a program that covers a wide spectrum of functions and components. It’s amazing. With the help of good tutorials and trying out for myself a little bit, it’s not too difficult to get at least into the basics.

The one that stands out is the speed trainer. I’m impressed by it’s versatility of adaptation to individual needs. Setting the playback faster, for example, each time the loop comes around and to put cownt downs into it. It’s a powerful tool for rhythm training and learning to play faster.

But looking at the tabs - sufficient for decades !!! – I do miss a lot the fingering for melody lines. That’s why I love to watch video lessons (like Robert’s) to learn new songs, with a lot of explanations, including fingering.

I’ll continue for the remaining 3 weeks. Trying out new things opens the mind.

Thanks a lot, Robert and Ron, for your recommendations.

Birgit

04-20-2021 until 04-27-2021

I’m still focusing on strumming 16th notes, playing hits and scratches and using 9th chords.

In the beginning it was a big problem tapping my foot only on the beat and not on every down strum!

I’ve heard a lot about this problem when changing from 8th note to 16th note strumming. And, yes, it’s definitely hard and needs a lot of practice, as well as playing accents and scratches.  

Now I gradually familiarize myself with little 16th note strumming patterns like this one:

n_xx  nvnx  xvxx  nxxx.

Coming from 60 bpm last week I’m now playing this pattern at 75 bpm and changing chords which are closely to each other like the Db9 and D9 chords.

It's a beginning!

This is all preparation for my goal to play Robert’s „Robben Ford Style Funky Rhythm“ with 16th notes.

Birgit

Glad to hear you are working on this. I can't really hear the drums in here, so it's hard to hear your timing. I wonder if I should do more excercises with Soundslice for funky and groovy dominant 7 chord rhythms.

Posted by: @bluesiline

This is all preparation for my goal to play Robert’s „Robben Ford Style Funky Rhythm“ with 16th notes.

That's a cool goal. Nice playing Birgit; I can hear some good progress on your right hand motion, getting the funk flavor.  

Nile Rogers, Mr Funky scratch guitar, album producer, and amazing human being, is an interesting example of rhythm funk from disco 70's pop 80's Madonna, Bowie w SRV,  and Vaughan Brothers, and on to Daft Punk's 2013 Random Access album, is an awesome insight to funk style.  Take a look at some of his explanatory videos on Youtube.  Very interesting man and approach to accuracy and feel.

@clayton

Thank you, Clayton, for these recommendations!

I’m really fascinated by Nile Rodgers explanations, how he developed the song «Get Lucky», how he came up with the whole rhythm looking from a meta-level onto parts and counterparts he combined to get the final song. Very enriching lessons.

He is living out rhythm, that’s for sure!

Birgit

Nile is a wonderful human being, so grounded and willing to share.  Clearly connected to people and what makes him such an amazing producer.

There's a lot of good content on YT to absorb.

04-28-2021 until 05-13-2021

I did a lot of strumming 16th note patterns and focusing on 7th, 9th and 13th chords. It’s a really time-consuming process but makes a lot of fun.

And it’s now the first time that I play Robert’s „Robben Ford Funky Style Rhythm“, but at a very slow tempo, 75 bpm, so it doesn’t really sound funky. Needs a lot more time to increase the tempo!!!

Robert uses a very cool A7 chord with the pinky on the B string of the 8th string. That sounds really cool, but I can’t play it cleanly until now. Therefore I use the normal A7 bar chord in my recording which is not so well suited for funky style.

It’s also very difficult to be in time with the transitions between the chords. That takes most of my practice time in comparison to the scratches which are not too difficult for me.

The most difficult transition is from D9 back to A7. The transition from A7 to D7 is middle difficult and the transition from E9 to D9 is relatively easy.

I’m a little bit slowed down in my practice. Due to my 1st corona vaccination I can’t fully use my strumming hand (a good excuse to apologize for mistakes 😉).

Birgit

Your practice is really going well and it is very clear in this recording- rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, it's a long road but the payoff lasts even longer, and you get so many benefits.   Well done, Birgit!

Your dedication and posting is always an inspiration.   

You will pick up speed, details, and comfort- faster and faster.   I am really interested to hear your thoughts on how this rhythm practice changes and improves your solo work.  Samurai- from one thing know many.

Wow Birgit im impressed! 👍 
I am a long weekend now in our mobile house.
And my feets are dancing on your great Guitar Rhythm now 😀 
Thanks for sharing.

Ans i hope you doing well with your first COVID-19 vaccine! 😉 

Nicely done Birgit! You had me tapping my foot!

Clayton, André and Chris, thanks a lot for your kind words 😊. 

I feel very well and my strumming hand is working properly. No excuses any longer ….

I would like to respond to Clayton’s question whether my rhythm practice has an influence on my solo work. It’s a very good question, but at the moment I can’t say much about it, because I’m really focused on my rhythm training and I neglected my solo playing a little bit.

I’m still working intensively with Justin Sandercoe’s « Funk Guitar Course » on Youtube. He is „my man“ for learning the basics of strumming 16th notes. He is a brilliant teacher and such a congenial guy! Clayton, I think you know him because you have his time trainer metronome.

But coming back to Samurai – from one thing know many:

First of all, I’m convinced that my rhythm training will open the door for learning (at a very slow tempo) Robert’s songs like « E Dorian Phrase – YL17 », « Em Pentatonic Box – YL25 » and so on, which consists of mostly 16th notes.

Secondly, as I’m working with lots of different funk rhythm backing tracks, I catch myself more often analysing these tracks in terms of their rhythmic structures, because with the 16th notes in mind it’s increasingly easier figuring out rhythmic patterns.

I listen to get as much details from the tracks to sharpen my ears and try to play these rhythms with my guitar. This is another enrichment – „from one thing know many“.

And thirdly, I'm convinced that my rhythm practice will have an influence on my solo work in terms of improvising over phrases.

But now my goal is preparing my fingers for learning more chord voicings and to get used to never stopping the 16th note patterns with my strumming hand and floating over the strings to minimize the scratches and leave more gaps in between. This will be a very special challenge for me!

Birgit

Good work, Birgit. I'd like to hear you just playing one chord, at a faster tempo. Just focus on the 16th notes muted at first. Lock in with the metronome. Then add accents on the 1. That's a great start and I'm planning a lesson on this. After that, there are different things that can be done - putting accents on different beats and adding more chords, but the first step has to be solid first.

@robert

Thank you, Robert, for your recommendations how to practice. I'll try it at a faster tempo 👍.

Birgit

Practice log 05-24-2021

Robert, you asked me last week to do the 16th note strumming using only one chord, that I should lock in with the metronome and add accents on the 1st 16th note.

I made a recording using only the D9 chord and playing only with the metronome. But I did it at 75 bpm and not at a faster tempo, because I wanted to make sure that you can hear all my accents and my scratched 16th notes very well.

I couldn’t stick to accenting just the 1st 16th note so I played different accents:

- a group of scratches

- accents on the 1st 16th note

- accents on the 1st and 4th 16th note followed by 4 scratches and so on

- accents only on the last 16th note followed by 4 scratches and so on

- accents on all four 16th notes  

I really tried to keep in time when changing from one pattern to the next. What I’ve learned so far:

- I can play a lot more bars without falling out of rhythm but

- I need more practice to play the accents with more staccato.

Birgit

@bluesiline

Nice exercise and well done. It's not easy accenting ,the subdivisions like that... You did very well. Keep it up!