I played the guitar for a few hours today. I played some stuff from memory, and I learned a couple of Lightnin’ Hopkins rhythms from a Stefan Grossman video. Let me list off some of the stuff I played from memory:

  1. “Darn That Dream”: I’m still flubbing a chord or two on the B section of this tune; I need more variation in the A sections, rhythmic and some reharm;
  2. “Li’l Darlin’”: I bumbled my way through this tune until I remembered most of it, somehow I am not remembering the coda; I need to hear this through the amp because the chords are very chimey, lots of open strings; something like this tune would sound good with a little bit of delay, maybe I should put the digital delay back in my signal chain;
  3. “Hey Hey”: I looped over these riffs for quite a while; still falling apart rhythmically, need to use the metronome to get everything solid and smooth;
  4. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”: Again, I don’t really remember the whole thing, I just loop through what I do remember, which is most of the first two A sections

I then worked on Lightnin’ Hopkins’s version of:

  1. “Baby Please Don’t Go”: Guitar tuned up a half step, played with E fingerings, but sounds in F; worked on a groove on the I chord, working the bass line and a kind-of Ry Cooder rumble/shuffle, with some riffs I learned from listening to Muddy Waters’s band from the mid-1970s, I don’t know if it is Bob Margolin or Luther Johnson playing the lines I like; used a metronome to work on a groove, very simple bass-led riff, played with the metronome playing 2 & 4 at 60 beats-per-half-note;

Let me now muse a bit on what I should be practicing:

  • Break out the Howard Morgen and Barry Galbraith chord solos I learned in the past and work on memorizing them again; I have memorized most of them in the past, so this phase should go quickly;
  • Re-learn the walking basslines with guitar comping; use the metronome;
  • I don’t know why I am using an unordered list now where I have used ordered lists previously, but there you go;
  • Once the chord solos are memorized and in development I need to go back through the Big Bill Broonzy/Charlie Patton/Son House/Robert Johnson/Muddy Waters fingerstyle stuff that I do; add Lightnin’ Hopkins to this list;
  • Once I get comfortable with a blues fingerstyle repertoire, begin to learn the vocal parts; memorize the lyrics;
  • Learn the lyrics and basic vocal parts for standards I play; learn “Autumn Leaves” with vocal parts
  • Begin to learn jazz standards and blues on the piano; start with melody and chords in free time, add bass lines where I hear them; emulate the way I learned to play “My Funny Valentine” on the piano; re-learn “My Funny Valentine,” and learn it on the guitar;
  • Get more comfortable with using a metronome, work on riffs with metronome hitting 2 & 4, or with metronome only hitting one beat per measure; work on my sense of time and my ability to play with swing; play walking basslines along with metronome until the bass is rock solid;
  • Buy a Fender bass and begin to practice bass lines from the guitar basslines book (the author of the book is a bassist, so the lines should be solid); learn bass parts for all the fingerstyle tunes I play on guitar; record myself playing the guitar parts, and then practice playing the bass along with my own guitar playing;
  • Is there some way to create background tracks for solo guitar gigs? Ableton Live seems to be the preferred DAW for live performance