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Transcript

Live Class: Beginner's Guide to Soloing- The ESSENTIALS · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:59
  SPEAKER_04: Hello.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_04: Good morning.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_04: Good morning.
• 1:03
  Steve: How you doing out there?
• 1:06
  Steve: Good morning.
• 1:07
  Steve: Good morning.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: Hello there.
• 1:10
  Steve: Hello.
• 1:11
  Steve: Good to see ya.
• 1:13
  Steve: All right.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_08: Morning, Steve.
• 1:15
  Steve: Good morning.
• 1:16
  Steve: Good morning.
• 1:17
  Steve: So glad you're here.
• 1:18
  Steve: So, guys, just remember, I'm I'm I'm gonna preface this and I'll say this a couple of times.
• 1:23
  Steve: This is not an intermediate to advanced kind of thing.
• 1:27
  Steve: We're gonna be talking about absolute basics of soloing for those of you that still struggle with that kind of thing.
• 1:33
  Steve: So that's where we're at today.
• 1:34
  Steve: So I just want to make sure everybody understands that.
• 1:36
  Steve: I will not be offended if you have to leave because you already know some of the things that we're talking about.
• 1:42
  Steve: You will not offend me.
• 1:43
  Steve: Okay.
• 1:44
  Steve: So we're gonna be starting at the very beginning and just talking about the differences between practice and playing.
• 1:49
  Steve: And I got a chart I'm gonna give you, and uh, we're just gonna kind of build from there.
• 1:54
  Steve: So let me just keep getting some people in here.
• 1:56
  Steve: But so hopefully your week is going good.
• 2:01
  Steve: Yeah.
• 2:04
  Steve: Good, good, good.
• 2:06
  Steve: All right.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_05: I had the privilege of seeing Jason Bonham last night, Led Zeppelin, an evening with Led Zeppelin.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was awesome.
• 2:14
  Steve: Oh, that's great.
• 2:15
  Steve: That's great.
• 2:15
  Steve: Who was do you know who was playing with Jason?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: It was just it was just them the whole night.
• 2:21
  unknown: Okay.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_05: At the celebrity theater in uh in Phoenix.
• 2:26
  Steve: Okay.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_05: It was awesome.
• 2:28
  Steve: Do you know who was playing guitar with him?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_05: Um, gosh, his name is he's uh he's Japanese, Jason.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's it's ironic because his name is Jimmy.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um I can't remember his last name.
• 2:43
  Steve: Okay.
• 2:44
  Steve: I'll have to look that up.
• 2:45
  Steve: That's interesting.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was it was it was incredible.
• 2:47
  Steve: I bet.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_05: Incredible show.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_05: They played like 14 songs.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, 50 years of incredible music is amazing.
• 2:57
  Steve: That's great.
• 2:57
  Steve: That's awesome.
• 2:59
  Steve: All right, guys.
• 3:00
  Steve: So here's oh, I'll get Drew in here.
• 3:01
  Steve: Okay, so let's do this.
• 3:02
  Steve: So, what we're gonna do is we're just gonna start off by talking a little bit, and I want to move this out of the way.
• 3:11
  Steve: Uh there we go.
• 3:15
  Steve: And I have five screens open.
• 3:18
  Steve: I have to adjust at once here.
• 3:20
  Steve: So there we go.
• 3:23
  Steve: And there.
• 3:25
  Steve: Alright, can you guys see my screen okay?
• 3:30
  Steve: Okay, and I'm gonna I'll post this.
• 3:31
  Steve: I'll post this when I post the remote.
• 3:35
  Steve: What's that now?
• 3:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 3:37
  Steve: Oh.
• 3:38
  Steve: All right.
• 3:39
  Steve: So what I'm gonna do, guys, I'm just gonna mute you for the time being.
• 3:43
  unknown: There we go.
• 3:44
  Steve: There we go.
• 3:45
  Steve: Okay, so hopefully you all can see this thing.
• 3:47
  Steve: And again, I'll post it when we get done.
• 3:49
  Steve: But what I want to talk about today is the difference in your in your brain between understanding practicing and soloing and playing, actually, playing, and what the difference is between the two and what you want to focus on.
• 4:02
  Steve: And then what we'll do is we'll start breaking into some of these things.
• 4:05
  Steve: So, for instance, practicing.
• 4:09
  Steve: We all know the importance of practicing, okay?
• 4:12
  Steve: But you have to understand, like, let me let me move back to this again.
• 4:18
  Steve: There we go.
• 4:19
  Steve: I'll come back to that in just a second.
• 4:22
  Steve: The oh, it was a little blurry?
• 4:25
  Steve: Okay, I'll I'll do the best I can with that.
• 4:27
  Steve: So, and again, I'll post it.
• 4:28
  Steve: It'll just, it'll just kind of help us for the time being.
• 4:31
  Steve: But practice, guys, is threefold.
• 4:35
  Steve: Okay.
• 4:36
  Steve: There's what what you can think, what you understand about what you want to do.
• 4:42
  Steve: Okay, you always have to understand that guitar playing does not start with your fingers, it starts with your brain.
• 4:48
  Steve: And you gotta understand that.
• 4:50
  Steve: The more you understand about what you what you want to do or what your options are, the more you can make the right decisions.
• 5:01
  Steve: The second thing is your eyes.
• 5:05
  Steve: What can you see with absolute certainty?
• 5:10
  Steve: Remember, as I I've told most of you guys, if you kind of know something, you kind of don't know something, and that's where the problem is.
• 5:20
  Steve: So when it comes to practice, it starts with what you understand and what you see.
• 5:26
  Steve: Now understand there's a million things, okay?
• 5:29
  Steve: What you see is if I look at my fretboard and I'm thinking a minor pentatonic, or I'm thinking caged, or I'm thinking, you know, whatever it might be.
• 5:40
  Steve: Do I see without question what it is that I want?
• 5:46
  Steve: Then I can go and I can start trying to work on playing it.
• 5:51
  Steve: So I want you guys to understand the power of that, because so often guitar players are just practicing things and they don't know why they're practicing it or they don't they don't know what its relevance is.
• 6:00
  Steve: And you have to understand when you go to practice, again, but let's let's break this down just for a second, and then we'll get into this.
• 6:08
  Steve: When you practice, you're either practicing on trying to see something on a larger scale, like a a scale across the entire fretboard.
• 6:20
  Steve: Or you're micro practicing, you're moving in and you're trying to figure out how to play this one position, or how to see it better, how to navigate through it better, or connecting these two positions together.
• 6:35
  Steve: Those are two very different kinds of practice, and you should be doing both of them.
• 6:41
  Steve: But the difference here is that even though you're doing those things, we still want to work on playing, which is what we're gonna talk about today.
• 6:47
  Steve: I just want you to understand before we move on the value of practice and what it is, like I've told you guys many times, practice with intention.
• 6:56
  Steve: Know what you're doing and why you're doing it.
• 6:58
  Steve: When you sit down to practice, know why you're doing what you're doing.
• 7:01
  Steve: Don't just practice because somebody told you to.
• 7:04
  Steve: Know what you're doing.
• 7:07
  Steve: Okay?
• 7:07
  Steve: One of the best ways of making progress as a guitar player is knowing where your flaws are.
• 7:12
  Steve: When you go to play, how many of you guys know where your flaws are?
• 7:16
  Steve: When you play, you know when you when you're trying to play something you're not comfortable with, or you keep getting stuck on something.
• 7:22
  Steve: See, that's the key, is don't don't, I mean, we'll tell you two, but don't just wait for someone to tell you.
• 7:29
  Steve: Like if you're practicing and you're like, well, this metronome's set too high.
• 7:32
  Steve: Well, then set it lower.
• 7:34
  Steve: I don't really, when I try and play my fretboard, I always get lost in position three.
• 7:39
  Steve: Okay, what does that tell you?
• 7:41
  Steve: I gotta work on position three more.
• 7:44
  Steve: I mean, there are obvious signs of things that you need to work on.
• 7:47
  Steve: Now, some of you are just working on maybe a position on the guitar, like, you know, the first position of A miter pentatonic.
• 7:54
  Steve: Some of you are working on your whole fretboard.
• 7:56
  Steve: What I'm saying is, if you're trying to work on your whole fretboard and you've got potholes all over in your positions, you're not really working on your whole fretboard.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta work on those potholes.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_04: Does that make sense to everybody?
• 8:13
  Steve: The moment you stop pretending and you start actually working on what you need, you're gonna make more progress.
• 8:22
  Steve: The moment you really realize where your problems are, and they again we all have them, okay, but the more you can focus on what that is and make it better.
• 8:32
  Steve: Now let's talk about how to do that.
• 8:34
  Steve: So I'm gonna go back to sharing the screen again here.
• 8:37
  Steve: There we go.
• 8:39
  Steve: Now, again, if it's fuzzy for you, I I I apologize.
• 8:43
  Steve: This is the best I can do for now.
• 8:45
  Steve: But um, so if we look at the left column, practice, build a foundation.
• 8:51
  Steve: So the first thing on that list is visualizing the positions.
• 8:55
  Steve: If you kind of sort of see a position, you kind of don't see it.
• 9:00
  Steve: You have to be able to look down and unequivocally look down and go exactly.
• 9:04
  Steve: I know I can see exactly what I want.
• 9:07
  Steve: My struggle is playing it, but I can absolutely see without question 585757575858, or 810, 710, 710, 79, 810, 810, or whatever it is.
• 9:20
  Steve: Whatever it is.
• 9:21
  Steve: Again, could be a cage system, could be a diatonic scale, could be all kinds of things.
• 9:26
  Steve: We're just we're gonna stay very basic today, but that's where your practice, you have to spend time thinking.
• 9:35
  Steve: You have to spend time studying, you have to spend time visualizing.
• 9:42
  Steve: If every time you practice the guitars in your hands, you're missing out on opportunity to practice other things, which is studying and comprehension.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: The guitar shouldn't be in your hands all the time.
• 9:59
  Steve: There are times when you should just be studying.
• 10:04
  Steve: That's not saying don't practice.
• 10:06
  Steve: That's not what I'm saying.
• 10:08
  Steve: What I'm saying is your fingers moving on the guitar is different than you learning to visualize something or you learning to comprehend something.
• 10:18
  Steve: So, number one is visualize the positions.
• 10:20
  Steve: Look down, see what you want.
• 10:24
  Steve: Okay.
• 10:24
  Steve: Number two is play with a metronome.
• 10:27
  Steve: Now let's talk about this.
• 10:28
  Steve: When you first start playing, okay, I'm gonna go back here again.
• 10:33
  Steve: When you first start playing something, the first thing you're trying to do is get comfortable with it.
• 10:36
  Steve: I can see the A minor pentatonic scale.
• 10:38
  Steve: What I need to now do is practice playing it.
• 10:41
  Steve: I need to practice picking, whether I'm down picking, whether I'm alternate picking.
• 10:45
  Steve: I need to practice shifting from one string to the next.
• 10:53
  Steve: Before I even worry about a metronome, the first thing I need to do is just practice playing.
• 10:59
  Steve: Do I have problems picking?
• 11:00
  Steve: Do I have problems alternate picking?
• 11:02
  Steve: Do I have problems shifting between strings?
• 11:17
  Steve: The more you recognize where those issues are for you, okay, it's not enough just to visualize it.
• 11:24
  Steve: You gotta play it.
• 11:26
  Steve: But it's not enough just to play it.
• 11:28
  Steve: You've got to try and make it sound good.
• 11:31
  Steve: You've got to try and make it sound like it flows, like a piano, right?
• 11:36
  Steve: You want your playing.
• 11:42
  Steve: You know, we get so obsessed with how fast we can do things.
• 11:45
  Steve: And I'm not saying that playing fast is bad.
• 11:46
  Steve: What I'm saying is because people get so obsessed with that, they bypass a lot of the problems that they're having because all they're focused on is one thing, which is how fast they can do something.
• 11:56
  Steve: Even if it sounds terrible, all they're focused on is how fast they can do it.
• 12:01
  Steve: They're not focusing on how good it sounds.
• 12:07
  Steve: Fast is a skill, it's a technique, it's an element that we can use in our playing.
• 12:12
  Steve: But we're not always playing fast.
• 12:14
  Steve: We are always up against a clock.
• 12:17
  Steve: We are always up against a metronome.
• 12:19
  Steve: Every song has a tempo.
• 12:20
  Steve: So we're up against that tempo, which is the next thing we'll talk about.
• 12:23
  Steve: I'm just saying, you don't always have to practice with a metronome.
• 12:26
  Steve: Sometimes what you do is you just practice trying to work on how does it sound, how does it feel when I play?
• 12:39
  Steve: How does it feel?
• 12:40
  Steve: How does it sound?
• 12:41
  Steve: Does my pick follow my hand?
• 12:43
  Steve: Does my right hand, in this case, follow my left hand?
• 12:47
  Steve: I gotta work on these things.
• 12:50
  Steve: So for me, intuition is not working with a metronome.
• 12:54
  Steve: Intuition is just working on things, trying to get comfortable.
• 12:57
  Steve: Is what I'm seeing and what I'm playing coinciding?
• 13:00
  Steve: And are my hands able to move in that platform?
• 13:05
  Steve: Now, as we want to start developing speed, let me do this again.
• 13:11
  Steve: That's where we start using a metronome.
• 13:14
  Steve: Okay?
• 13:15
  Steve: So let me show you what I mean by that, and then we'll get to the good stuff here.
• 13:21
  Steve: So a lot of people feel like they shouldn't ask questions about a metronome because they should already know how to use a metronome.
• 13:29
  Steve: That's not true.
• 13:30
  Steve: If you've never used a metronome or you're still not sure how to use a metronome, you gotta ask questions.
• 13:35
  Steve: Okay?
• 13:35
  Steve: So the way I have always taught using a metronome, and you can do whatever you want, but the way I've always taught it is you set the metronome at wherever.
• 13:44
  Steve: I'm gonna set it at 115, just as an example for you.
• 13:48
  Steve: And I've always taught students play two per click.
• 13:52
  Steve: Two per click, two per click, two per click, two per click.
• 13:55
  Steve: That's how I've taught people.
• 13:57
  Steve: So if it's too fast, slow it down.
• 14:00
  Steve: If it's not fast enough, speed it up.
• 14:03
  Steve: But you're doing two per click.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So when I play this, my brain immediately thinks that's what I'm thinking.
• 14:17
  Steve: And that click is is absolutely crucial that I play to that click.
• 14:25
  Steve: I can't do this, guys.
• 14:26
  Steve: I can't have the metronome and go.
• 14:35
  Steve: I'm not playing with the metronome.
• 14:37
  Steve: I might as well shut the metronome off.
• 14:41
  Steve: The metronome's going on over here.
• 14:43
  Steve: I'm not, I have nothing to do with that metronome.
• 14:45
  Steve: It's pointless to me.
• 14:47
  Steve: I have to play with the metronome.
• 14:52
  Steve: So I have to find the speed at which I can play with the metronome.
• 14:57
  Steve: And this is gonna be different for every one of you.
• 14:59
  Steve: It's not a matter of feeling bad.
• 15:02
  Steve: If you have to slow the metronome down, it doesn't mean you suck.
• 15:06
  Steve: It means you have to find the speed at which you can get on the board.
• 15:10
  Steve: You gotta get on the board.
• 15:13
  Steve: So if I was at 115, this is just a hypothetical, and I'm thinking pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, bop, pop, pop, pop, bop, pop, that means I should be able to play it at that speed.
• 15:32
  Steve: And in this case, every time the metronome clicks, I'm on a new string because I'm doing two per click.
• 15:39
  Steve: Bada, bada, bada, bada, bada, bada.
• 15:42
  Steve: So every time it clicks, I'm doing a new string.
• 15:46
  Steve: Okay?
• 15:47
  Steve: When I play this, how does it feel?
• 15:51
  Steve: Is it comfortable?
• 15:52
  Steve: Is it smooth?
• 15:54
  Steve: Am I tense?
• 15:57
  Steve: Or can I play this comfortably and I'm relaxed?
• 16:01
  Steve: Could I do this more than once?
• 16:02
  Steve: Could I do it for five minutes straight?
• 16:06
  Steve: See, that's when you start getting to things, is you know, doing it once or twice or three times is fine.
• 16:12
  Steve: Do it a hundred times.
• 16:15
  Steve: Does your brain start getting lost, right?
• 16:17
  Steve: Do you start losing concentration?
• 16:20
  Steve: Do your fingers start tensing up?
• 16:22
  Steve: If I was just gonna go like this, can I concentrate 10 times in a row?
• 16:41
  Steve: 20 times in a row.
• 16:45
  Steve: See, it's not just can I do it once, it's can I stay in the game for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes, five minutes.
• 16:53
  Steve: Can I stay in the game?
• 16:57
  Steve: Or do I start feeling myself yeah, yeah.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_08: Are you saying not to count, just to go with a beat of the metronome?
• 17:04
  Steve: No, no, no.
• 17:04
  Steve: You can you can count, but okay, this is a good question.
• 17:08
  Steve: Let's talk about this.
• 17:09
  Steve: So when you're doing two per click, let's, and and again, I'll do my best to explain this to you, okay?
• 17:17
  Steve: As I'm hearing this, I don't have to count those.
• 17:22
  Steve: Okay, I'm not counting one, two, three, four.
• 17:26
  Steve: Because it might be one, two, three, one, two, three, or it might be one, two, three, four, five, right?
• 17:34
  Steve: The the the amount of those is irrelevant.
• 17:37
  Steve: Okay?
• 17:38
  Steve: Now, what I want to be able to do is cut this into two.
• 17:42
  Steve: So I'm thinking one and one and one and one and T T T T T T T T, right?
• 17:49
  Steve: So right now, counting it, counting isn't really gonna do me any good because I have nothing to count against.
• 17:57
  Steve: I'm not I'm not playing in four or three, four or something.
• 18:01
  Steve: I'm just I'm just playing this shape, doing two per click.
• 18:06
  Steve: Does that make sense?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_08: That's kind of what I was asking.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, because because when you're counting and trying to sync with a metronome, and I have one that's you know visual and it has little dashes, and it accentuates the first beat.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_08: And if you're counting and trying to do all those three things at the same time, this doesn't work.
• 18:27
  Steve: Right.
• 18:28
  Steve: Well, let's let's dig just a little bit deeper in there because what you're saying is really, really important.
• 18:33
  Steve: Counting is important when you need to count.
• 18:37
  Steve: For instance, how many measures are we doing before we go to this?
• 18:41
  Steve: Right?
• 18:42
  Steve: Or, you know, maybe when you first start learning how to do a strumming pattern for a particular song, you need to count to make sure that you know where things are.
• 18:50
  Steve: But the reality is the more you play, let's take this as an example, everybody.
• 18:57
  Steve: I'm gonna count to four.
• 19:00
  Steve: One, two, three, four.
• 19:03
  Steve: One, two, three, four.
• 19:05
  Steve: One, two, what happens in my brain is so I start feeling it as distance.
• 19:15
  Steve: And my whole body tells me where this is, right there.
• 19:20
  Steve: So now I'm not counting anymore.
• 19:22
  Steve: I'm just feeling this distance as this long, so to speak.
• 19:25
  Steve: Does that make sense?
• 19:27
  Steve: I'm feeling there it is, and there it is.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_08: That's kind of what I was asking because I've always had kind of a hard time coming in on the first beat when you're after you count four, you've gone through a bunch of bars, and sometimes you get a little ahead or a little behind.
• 19:45
  Steve: Yeah.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_08: And then this is good.
• 19:48
  unknown: Okay.
• 19:48
  Steve: Yeah, and and and I'm please understand, guys, what I'm not saying is counting is bad.
• 20:16
  Steve: That's not what I'm saying.
• 20:16
  Steve: What I'm saying is there are times when you don't need to count because you can feel whatever it is that you need.
• 20:23
  Steve: You can either feel the beat or you can feel the distance between beat one and beat one again, right?
• 20:30
  Steve: So it depends on where you are with that.
• 20:32
  Steve: But you know, one E and a two E and a three, like when I'm doing this, if I'm doing this, guys, I'm not counting this.
• 20:41
  Steve: I'm feeling this.
• 20:42
  Steve: What I'm concentrating on is that.
• 20:46
  Steve: That's what I'm concentrating on, is that click.
• 20:48
  Steve: I'm not concentrating on which one is a one or a two or a three or an and between.
• 20:53
  Steve: I can feel the and.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm thinking about.
• 21:03
  Steve: And I know that's kind of vague, but does that make sense?
• 21:09
  Steve: Okay.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_08: So as I'm as I'm so like when you're playing, like um uh um something like uh after midnight where you're playing.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_08: Should follow the beat, try to follow the don't necessarily count, but try to get into like a groove.
• 21:38
  Steve: Well, okay, so so here's the first thing I would do, bud, is before I even play along, if I'm gonna play after midnight, the first thing I do is listen to the song.
• 21:46
  Steve: And yes, I know you've heard this song a thousand times, but now you're listening to it as a guitar player.
• 21:51
  Steve: So the first thing I do as I listen to the song without playing, that's another conversation we could have, but I'm listening to the song over and over and over.
• 22:01
  Steve: And I'm getting, I that's when I'm doing my counting.
• 22:04
  Steve: That's when I'm doing my planning, that's when I'm figuring out where the chord changes are and the blocks are and all that kind of stuff is I'm not playing it.
• 22:11
  Steve: I'm listening to it.
• 22:13
  Steve: And I'm figuring out how it all goes in my head.
• 22:16
  Steve: So when I start playing along with it, there's nothing to count because I've already figured all that out.
• 22:22
  Steve: I'm playing along with it.
• 22:25
  Steve: You see, that's one of the things that people do wrong too, is that they they immediately bypass that and just trying to play along.
• 22:31
  Steve: The first thing I do is I I I figure out everything in my head before again, these two things.
• 22:36
  Steve: I figure out everything in my head before I try and play along with it.
• 22:40
  Steve: Because playing along is the physical part.
• 22:44
  Steve: It's not the analysis part.
• 22:45
  Steve: I've already done the analysis, I've already thought about all of that stuff.
• 22:48
  Steve: So if I need to count, boom, boom, after midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down.
• 22:55
  Steve: That's the beat.
• 22:56
  Steve: Right?
• 22:57
  Steve: So that's Where the beat is.
• 22:59
  Steve: Then I start thinking about in my head where those core changes are, and I start figuring all that stuff out.
• 23:04
  Steve: So I've already got that stuff planned in my head.
• 23:07
  Steve: So when I start playing along, no, I I can be, I can, with complete honesty, I can say I don't count.
• 23:12
  Steve: That doesn't mean everybody's the same way.
• 23:14
  Steve: But I don't count.
• 23:15
  Steve: But the reality though is subconsciously, I suppose I am counting, right?
• 23:21
  Steve: I'm just for me, counting is a distance more than is a number.
• 23:25
  Steve: Like I'm not sitting there going, one, two, three, four, one, two.
• 23:29
  Steve: Like I don't think that way.
• 23:30
  Steve: I feel it as a distance.
• 23:33
  Steve: After midnight, we're gonna let it all hang down.
• 23:37
  Steve: That's a distance to me.
• 23:39
  Steve: There's four of them in there.
• 23:41
  Steve: There's my foot, but I'm not really counting it.
• 23:44
  Steve: I'm my body is feeling it.
• 23:47
  Steve: Does that sort of make sense?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 23:50
  Steve: Okay.
• 23:51
  Steve: Now, again, that that would even be a conversation we could have for another Wednesday, is exactly what you're talking about right there.
• 23:58
  Steve: Okay?
• 23:59
  Steve: So I'm not I'm I'm not trying to rush past you.
• 24:02
  Steve: I'm just saying counting is one of those weird things where we could even just have a full conversation with everybody on what people think of how to count.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, see, this ties into what I practice.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_08: You know, you're saying practice and playing.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm you know, I'm practicing certain chord patterns to time, you know, the pentatonic scales, and then sometimes I'll just improvise over them with no backing track.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_08: Just move between the major triads and minor triads and those things.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_08: But my issue, like I said before, is like timing, and this helps clear it up because I was listening to a backing track last night and playing along with it, and after a while I kind of got synced up with it.
• 24:44
  unknown: Sure.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_08: Just strumming along with it.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_08: But I wasn't really kind of one, two, three, four.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_08: I was just like strumming the song and making a chord change.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_08: I don't have a problem doing a change, it's just getting the timing and the tone when I'm playing.
• 24:59
  Steve: Well, and and hopefully, so we'll see how much time we have today.
• 25:02
  Steve: But the key here is to get to the next part, which is where we're gonna really dive into what you're talking about now.
• 25:06
  Steve: Carrie, what do you got, buddy?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_07: So just go back to um earlier when you were talking about you know, you were feeling the and, you know, you you're feeling the and.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_07: So is the part that you're feeling, is the and in between?
• 25:22
  Steve: Yes.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 25:23
  Steve: So if I listen to this, those are the downbeats.
• 25:27
  Steve: Okay.
• 25:28
  Steve: Those are the quarter notes.
• 25:29
  Steve: So the offbeats.
• 25:32
  Steve: Got it.
• 25:33
  Steve: Awesome.
• 25:34
  Steve: Are in between.
• 25:35
  Steve: Now, the goal is to feel the off beat against the downbeat.
• 25:41
  Steve: You know, it's okay to you you want to have the downbeat.
• 25:43
  Steve: So if you're thinking, again, in in counting terms, one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, and two, and three, and four, and one, and two, and three.
• 25:56
  Steve: And for us, we think of that as an up, right?
• 25:58
  Steve: One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So as we're listening to that again, if we strip away downs and ups and all that stuff, when we just start thinking about two per click, four per click.
• 26:23
  Steve: The holy grail is the one, is the click.
• 26:27
  Steve: And so when we're practicing, it's essential that when we're practicing, and this gets back to what we were talking about, it's essential that we can play whatever it is we're trying to play at the speed that we've got the metronome set, where that click, we're playing the in in pentatonics terms, because there's two on each string, it's lining up.
• 27:18
  Steve: See, the thing about practice is I'm I'm becoming one with that metronome.
• 27:24
  Steve: I'm not playing alongside it, I'm inside it.
• 27:28
  Steve: I'm not forgetting where that metronome is.
• 27:31
  Steve: The metronome is leading me.
• 27:32
  Steve: I cannot lead the metronome.
• 27:34
  Steve: It doesn't even know I exist.
• 27:37
  Steve: So I have to play along with it, just like it's a drummer, right?
• 27:41
  Steve: I have to be playing along with it.
• 27:43
  Steve: So if I try and practice my scale positions, right, or whatever, and I set the metronome at the wrong speed, it's either too fast and I'm not able to keep up.
• 27:57
  Steve: And I have to be aware of that.
• 27:59
  Steve: Like if I'm just playing, like I just showed you a little while ago, if I'm just playing, I'm not making a connection to the metronome.
• 28:06
  Steve: If the metronome's too fast and I'm trying to play, I will not keep up.
• 28:10
  Steve: And I have to be aware of that.
• 28:11
  Steve: I have to go, oh, whoops, I gotta slow that sucker down a little bit.
• 28:17
  Steve: Now, the other problem, guys, is it is possible to set the metronome too slow to where you're not really pushing yourself.
• 28:27
  Steve: Right?
• 28:28
  Steve: You could set it at 80 and play along with it perfectly, which is great.
• 28:33
  Steve: But then you gotta edge up a little bit.
• 28:34
  Steve: You gotta find that spot where you gotta push into yourself a little bit and practice a little bit, right?
• 28:40
  Steve: That line, that crack line, if you will.
• 28:43
  Steve: You gotta you wanna figure out where that is.
• 28:47
  Steve: So then tomorrow morning when you practice, you're not gonna go for that crack line, you're going underneath it because you got to get warmed up, you gotta get your body and your brain going.
• 28:57
  Steve: But then once you get there, you come back up to that crack line again and you start working it.
• 29:05
  Steve: And sometimes it's gonna feel good and sometimes it's gonna suck.
• 29:08
  Steve: Why?
• 29:08
  Steve: Because it's a crack line, it's your brake line.
• 29:13
  Steve: But eventually you're gonna push through that break line, and now you're gonna have a break line or crack line up here a little bit.
• 29:20
  Steve: But if you're never pushing, you don't know where that line is.
• 29:25
  Steve: If you're always playing too fast, you're not connected to the metronome anyway.
• 29:33
  Steve: If you play along and you start making mistakes, you have to ask yourself, do I know this?
• 29:38
  Steve: This goes back to the visualization thing or the comprehension thing.
• 29:42
  Steve: If I'm trying to play with the metronome and I keep hitting the wrong notes, do I really know this scale?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_04: My fingers aren't gonna fix it.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_04: My brain is gonna fix it.
• 29:56
  Steve: So learning to play along with a metronome, guys, is really, really important.
• 30:01
  Steve: And I always use the analogy, I don't want to waste your time, I want to get to everything here, but I always use the analogy.
• 30:06
  Steve: I was a I was a sprinter in high school, and I was a long distance runner in college and and as an adult.
• 30:13
  Steve: When I was a sprinter, a tenth of a second, a hundredth of a second can make all the difference in the world.
• 30:23
  Steve: You don't feel it as a runner, but if you didn't have that stopwatch, you'd have no idea whether you're getting faster or not.
• 30:31
  Steve: You're just assuming that everything's going good.
• 30:34
  Steve: When somebody times you, they go, dude, lay off the potatoes.
• 30:39
  Steve: Like we gotta we got work to do, man.
• 30:41
  Steve: We gotta get this thing going.
• 30:44
  Steve: Because they can tell.
• 30:46
  Steve: That's what a metronome is.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: It's your truth.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_04: It tells you exactly if you're getting better or not.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_04: It tells you whether you're connected or not.
• 30:59
  Steve: So for me, the metronome is that important.
• 31:03
  Steve: Okay?
• 31:04
  Steve: And here's the bigger picture, guys, which is what we're getting into next.
• 31:07
  Steve: The metronome is not just a metronome, it's your drummer, it's your tempo to the songs you're gonna jam to.
• 31:13
  Steve: That's what it is.
• 31:15
  Steve: When you realize that you can play eighth notes at 115, you have now realized that you cannot play eighth notes at 130.
• 31:25
  Steve: So if your backing track is at 130, is that a good practice backing track for you?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe not.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_04: You're trying to play something you can't even play.
• 31:39
  Steve: So once you establish where your tempo is, when you look for backing tracks again, you're looking for backing tracks with purpose.
• 31:46
  Steve: Is it in the key I'm practicing in it?
• 31:48
  Steve: Is it in a tempo that I'm comfortable with?
• 31:52
  Steve: If I'm just grabbing backing tracks at random and I can't figure out why sometimes I'm good at them, I suck at them.
• 31:57
  Steve: Guess what?
• 31:58
  Steve: This is why.
• 32:01
  Steve: You got to put thought into that backing track, find the right backing track.
• 32:05
  Steve: Okay, so let's keep going here.
• 32:07
  Steve: I'm gonna screen share again.
• 32:10
  Steve: There we go.
• 32:12
  Steve: Okay, so play with a metronome.
• 32:14
  Steve: Connect the positions.
• 32:16
  Steve: Okay?
• 32:17
  Steve: There are lots of ways you can practice with your studio instructor and the other instructors for that matter, connecting the positions.
• 32:23
  Steve: You might play up and down, okay?
• 32:25
  Steve: You might play up, back down, and then move over to the next position.
• 32:32
  Steve: Play it up, play it down.
• 32:38
  Steve: You might go to the third position, do the same thing.
• 32:40
  Steve: Fourth position, do the same thing.
• 32:41
  Steve: Connect them all together without stopping.
• 33:08
  Steve: Okay?
• 33:09
  Steve: You might practice going up one position and then moving over and coming down the next position.
• 33:18
  Steve: Up the next one, down the next one.
• 33:23
  unknown: Okay?
• 33:23
  Steve: Guys, you might practice all of those kinds of things.
• 33:26
  Steve: There's a million ways you can practice stuff, but connecting the positions, learning how to move between the positions, which brings us to number four, which is my own creation, which I love, is meandering.
• 33:40
  Steve: Now we're not going to get into meandering again, but in the classroom, there's a there's a video that talks about meandering.
• 33:47
  Steve: Most of you, how many of you heard heard me talk about meandering before?
• 33:50
  Steve: Yeah, most of you probably have.
• 33:52
  Steve: And it's okay.
• 33:53
  Steve: Again, I just don't want to, we could do a whole lesson on meandering, okay?
• 33:56
  Steve: So I don't want to get off on a tangent, but meandering is a great way to practice moving around inside the positions, moving around between positions.
• 34:05
  Steve: It's a great way to practice.
• 34:07
  Steve: If you don't know meandering or you don't practice meandering, write down meandering is important, and I should do it every single day.
• 34:16
  Steve: And I'm not kidding, guys.
• 34:18
  Steve: It it really will help you with your freedom.
• 34:21
  Steve: Hey, Steve.
• 34:22
  Steve: Meandering is yeah, yeah.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_07: Meandering is not noodling, correct?
• 34:27
  Steve: Meandering is not noodling.
• 34:30
  Steve: Meandering has parameters, okay?
• 34:32
  Steve: And the parameters to meandering are again, you have to set the metronome at a speed that you're capable of meandering.
• 34:40
  Steve: And the other part of meandering is that you don't stop.
• 34:45
  Steve: And the other part of meandering is meandering is brainless.
• 34:48
  Steve: You are not trying to pre-plan your movements.
• 34:52
  Steve: You're just taking a metronome and you're going.
• 35:45
  Steve: Meandering says, do not do that.
• 35:48
  Steve: Jump around.
• 35:50
  Steve: Anything, anything.
• 35:52
  Steve: And you're gonna make a thousand mistakes when you first start trying to do it.
• 35:57
  Steve: And if you find that when you're trying to do it, you keep having to stop, the metronome's probably too fast.
• 36:05
  Steve: Okay?
• 36:06
  Steve: Meandering is not music.
• 36:08
  Steve: Meandering is training yourself to play randomly versus up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down.
• 36:18
  Steve: Because when we play, when we solo, it's more like random, it's more like meandering than it is scales.
• 36:30
  Steve: You're not just going when you play like that, it sounds like you're playing a scale.
• 36:40
  Steve: Why?
• 36:41
  Steve: Because you're playing a friggin' scale.
• 36:45
  Steve: Meandering says do not do that.
• 36:47
  Steve: Okay, which is what we're gonna get to next.
• 36:49
  Steve: Again, we got 20 minutes.
• 36:50
  Steve: I want to get to this stuff as best we can here.
• 36:52
  Steve: So, and then guys, we can keep talking about that.
• 36:55
  Steve: That's the beauty of this conversation, is this conversation can take us anywhere we need to go independently with your instructor, with the other instructors, with your studio instructor, with me, wherever you need to go.
• 37:06
  Steve: I just want to fill in some of the gaps here for you.
• 37:09
  Steve: Okay, so let's keep going now.
• 37:11
  Steve: And then the last one is reinforce and review.
• 37:14
  Steve: This is so important, guys.
• 37:16
  Steve: Find the potholes, find the flaws that you have, and then fix them.
• 37:26
  Steve: Fix them.
• 37:28
  Steve: Slow down, speed up, work on that position more, work on that picking more.
• 37:34
  Steve: Whatever it is that you need, stop playing and spend some time visualizing.
• 37:40
  Steve: Go upstairs, sit on your couch with a chart for 30 minutes and just study that position.
• 37:49
  Steve: Just study it, just stare at it.
• 37:52
  Steve: Just absorb that thing into your brain.
• 37:57
  Steve: Or those two positions, or whatever.
• 38:00
  Steve: Don't expect because you're practicing, you're visualizing the same way because you're not.
• 38:05
  Steve: Because when you're practicing, you're thinking about everything that needs to go into playing.
• 38:11
  Steve: When you're studying, you're sitting there looking at that chart going like caged.
• 38:17
  Steve: Guys, you'd for those of you that have tried to study cage, you'd make way more progress sitting there studying the chart than you would practicing it.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_04: Now, don't get me wrong, once you can see it, now you gotta go play it.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: Now you gotta implement it.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_04: But you gotta see it.
• 38:36
  Steve: Otherwise you're working backwards.
• 38:39
  unknown: Okay?
• 38:40
  Steve: So now let's get to the good stuff.
• 38:41
  Steve: Let's move over to the other side here.
• 38:44
  Steve: And then I'm gonna give you a backing track and all that sort of thing.
• 38:47
  Steve: So, most important thing that isn't up here, choosing the right backing track.
• 38:56
  Steve: Find a backing track that fits where you are in your practice.
• 39:01
  Steve: With your meandering, with your scale practice, with the key that you're playing in, with the groove.
• 39:09
  Steve: Okay, if you choose a backing track that's a triplet and you've never played triplets before, or you're not practicing triplets, you're gonna struggle.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't know what a triplet is, that's okay.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's something we gotta learn.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just saying, you gotta find the right backing track.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_04: Okay?
• 39:29
  Steve: So, bread and butter, number one.
• 39:31
  Steve: This is my favorite thing, and this is by far, in my opinion, the single most important thing.
• 39:38
  Steve: Eighth notes, and then to a lesser degree, sixteenth notes.
• 39:43
  Steve: You lock into the beat and you create a groove.
• 39:46
  Steve: Okay, now what do I mean by that?
• 39:48
  Steve: I'm gonna show you.
• 39:50
  Steve: Okay, I'm gonna pull up a backing track here, and the name of this backing track, if you're writing things down, I'll send you a link to this as well when I post everything.
• 39:59
  Steve: But the name of the backing track is Deep Soul Groove Backing Track in A minor.
• 40:08
  Steve: That's what it's called.
• 40:10
  Steve: Deep Soul Groove Backing Track in A minor.
• 40:13
  Steve: The reason I like this one, because it's an A minor and it's 80 beats per minute.
• 40:19
  Steve: It is well within the range for most of you to be able to do a little bit of jamming.
• 40:24
  Steve: It's nice and slow.
• 40:26
  Steve: So as I listen to this track, which I want you to do the same thing, we figure out where the quarter note is.
• 40:43
  Steve: Now, one, two, three, four.
• 40:47
  Steve: One, two, but I don't really count.
• 40:50
  Steve: I can feel where the repetition happens.
• 40:53
  Steve: It's here.
• 40:56
  Steve: And here.
• 40:59
  Steve: And here.
• 41:01
  Steve: Now subconsciously am I counting, maybe, but my body is telling me where this is every time.
• 41:07
  Steve: I can feel that.
• 41:09
  Steve: Now my foot is always tapping.
• 41:13
  Steve: Okay, so if that's our quarter note, that's our quarter note.
• 41:19
  Steve: What we want the bread and butter is eighth notes.
• 41:23
  Steve: Two per click.
• 41:25
  Steve: Okay?
• 41:26
  Steve: So as I'm listening to this, eighth is here.
• 41:31
  Steve: Sorry, quarter is here.
• 41:34
  Steve: Eighth.
• 42:05
  Steve: So now that I've got those eighth notes, the name of this backing track is Deep Soul Groove Backing Track in A minor.
• 42:20
  Steve: And again, I'll post it for you, but that's what it's called.
• 42:24
  Steve: Okay?
• 42:25
  Steve: So what's going on here?
• 42:27
  Steve: We're doing two things.
• 42:29
  Steve: We're creating eighth notes.
• 42:32
  Steve: That's my palette.
• 42:33
  Steve: That's what I'm gonna work off of.
• 42:35
  Steve: Boom, bum bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bump, bum, bum, bum, bum.
• 42:41
  Steve: And now I'm pseudo-meandering.
• 42:44
  Steve: I'm just picking a couple of things and grabbing it.
• 42:48
  Steve: I can play sequentially.
• 42:51
  Steve: It's on YouTube.
• 42:54
  Steve: Okay, I can play sequentially, or I can jump around.
• 42:58
  Steve: But the point is not whether I'm playing sequentially or jumping around.
• 43:02
  Steve: It's getting used to understanding where that eighth note is, and then you start playing little phrases.
• 43:20
  Steve: So here's our eighth quarter note.
• 43:23
  Steve: Here's our eighth note.
• 43:27
  Steve: Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.
• 43:36
  Steve: Now, some of those eighth notes are on what we call a downbeat.
• 43:40
  Steve: Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.
• 43:44
  Steve: Some of those eighth notes are on what we call an offbeat.
• 43:46
  Steve: Bump bump bump bump bump bump bump.
• 43:50
  Steve: The eighth notes are gonna be more interesting than the downbeats.
• 43:55
  unknown: Right?
• 43:55
  Steve: The offbeat, I should say, are gonna be more interesting.
• 43:58
  Steve: They've got more flavor.
• 43:59
  Steve: If you just play on the downbeats all the time, bop bump bump bump bump bum bump bump bum bump bum bum bump bump bum bump bum bum, it's gonna sound really silly.
• 44:10
  Steve: If you start playing on the off beats once in a while, bump, bump, bump, bum, bump, bum, bump, bum, bum, bum.
• 44:22
  Steve: Those eighth notes have flavor, they have style, they feel funky.
• 44:27
  Steve: The downbeats feel like Frankenstein.
• 44:31
  Steve: It's not that the downbeats are bad, but if you play everything that starts and ends on a downbeat, it's gonna feel like you're just playing squares.
• 44:40
  Steve: Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
• 44:47
  Steve: You gotta learn how to play on the off beat.
• 44:50
  Steve: Bump, bump, bump, bump, bum, bump, bum.
• 44:55
  Steve: So, what are we playing?
• 44:57
  Steve: Right now.
• 44:58
  Steve: We are playing gibberish.
• 44:59
  Steve: We're not trying to plan everything at this point.
• 45:03
  Steve: We're just playing.
• 45:04
  Steve: That's the point of meandering.
• 45:33
  Steve: So what I'm doing is with these eighth notes, I'm creating phrases.
• 45:40
  Steve: I'm not concerned about landing on the right note at the right time.
• 45:43
  Steve: I'm not, we're not there yet.
• 45:45
  Steve: We're not doing all of that.
• 45:46
  Steve: Right now, we're just trying to take these eighth notes.
• 45:49
  Steve: Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun and cut them in pieces.
• 45:54
  Steve: Bump, bump, bum, bump, bump, bump, bump, bum, bum, bump, bump, bum, bump, bump.
• 46:03
  Steve: Does that make sense, guys?
• 46:04
  Steve: We're just chopping this five-minute series of eighth notes, we're just chopping it into pieces.
• 46:11
  Steve: Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.
• 46:22
  Steve: Whatever.
• 46:24
  Steve: That's different than practicing your scale up and down.
• 46:28
  Steve: You're trying to be cognizant about creating a phrase, a sentence.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_04: And what happens at the end of a sentence?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: We stop.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like right now.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_04: We stop.
• 46:44
  Steve: That's where you create space.
• 46:47
  Steve: Meandering is completely different because meandering, you're trying not to stop.
• 46:51
  Steve: You're just trying to play as much as you can without stopping.
• 46:54
  Steve: Music says, shut up.
• 46:57
  Steve: Music says stop playing.
• 47:00
  Steve: That space is just as important as the notes that you're playing.
• 47:03
  Steve: And that's good for you because then you can stop.
• 47:18
  Steve: Okay?
• 47:18
  Steve: That's what phrasing is.
• 47:21
  Steve: So eighth notes are for everybody here, especially if you're a beginner at soloing, eighth notes are your key.
• 47:27
  Steve: Eighth note, eighth notes are your bread and butter.
• 47:30
  Steve: Okay?
• 47:31
  Steve: Yes, you can play quarter notes or half notes or whole notes, or you could not play at all.
• 47:36
  Steve: You could start this backing track and just sit there and eat a pizza and not play at all.
• 47:41
  Steve: Okay?
• 47:42
  Steve: Not playing is easy.
• 47:45
  Steve: Playing is the hard part.
• 47:47
  Steve: Because people always go, what about whole notes?
• 47:49
  Steve: Well, dude, you can you can I win.
• 47:58
  Steve: I'm waiting way longer than you are.
• 48:00
  Steve: You know what I mean?
• 48:01
  Steve: It's not about not playing.
• 48:03
  Steve: It's important to stop playing, obviously.
• 48:05
  Steve: But what makes this hard is trying to play those eighth notes.
• 48:10
  Steve: So you you chop them up.
• 48:12
  Steve: Bump bum bump bump.
• 48:15
  Steve: Bump bump bump bum bump bump.
• 48:19
  Steve: What you're playing is irrelevant at this point.
• 48:21
  Steve: What you're playing is meandering at this point.
• 48:24
  Steve: Don't worry about that.
• 48:25
  Steve: We'll come around, we'll figure that out.
• 48:26
  Steve: I can help you with that.
• 48:29
  Steve: Okay.
• 48:30
  Steve: So now the next thing I want you to think about, I want to just finish this up so you guys can see all this.
• 48:35
  Steve: So uh let me get this out of the way.
• 48:38
  Steve: There we go.
• 48:39
  Steve: So phrasing and moving.
• 48:41
  Steve: That's what we just talked about.
• 48:42
  Steve: The next thing, dynamics.
• 48:45
  Steve: Picking softer and harder.
• 48:48
  Steve: Playing quieter, playing louder.
• 48:52
  Steve: You'd be surprised at how that adds reality to what it is that you're doing, just like when you strum.
• 48:58
  Steve: People underestimate that.
• 48:59
  Steve: It's not just that you can strum or you can make a strumming pattern.
• 49:03
  Steve: It's what does it sound like?
• 49:06
  Steve: Is it engaging?
• 49:08
  Steve: You guys have all heard somebody that sits down with an acoustic guitar and you're like, man, that sounds great.
• 49:12
  Steve: It's not just because they're fast or they're smart, it's because of the way they play.
• 49:17
  Steve: That's what for me dynamics are all about.
• 49:21
  Steve: And then we're gonna kind of bypass this because we'll we'll talk about this.
• 49:24
  Steve: We can go into this next week if you guys want to, but um we can keep going with this.
• 49:28
  Steve: But articulation and feel, like vibrato, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, these are all things that we can use to make things sound more real when we get there.
• 49:40
  Steve: And then number five is musical thinking.
• 49:42
  Steve: Again, this stuff takes time.
• 49:44
  Steve: We're not in any hurry.
• 49:45
  Steve: I want to I want to stay on the first couple uh and finish this up because I would love to see you guys post some videos of you doing this stuff.
• 49:55
  Steve: So now here's what I want to go back to.
• 49:58
  Steve: Just so you all understand this, and then we can talk about this real quick.
• 50:01
  Steve: So, eighth notes, bread and butter.
• 50:03
  Steve: When you listen to a backing track, figuring out where your quarter note is, and then there it is.
• 50:12
  Steve: This is what you're building off of.
• 50:16
  Steve: Now, when you start coming into view with those eighth notes and they start making sense to you, the next option up, when you've got those eighth notes dialing in, the next option up is sixteenth notes.
• 50:32
  Steve: Now, sixteenth notes are obviously twice as fast as eighth notes.
• 50:36
  Steve: They're harder to play, right?
• 50:38
  Steve: If I was playing the scale at this speed, just so you see this, if I was playing eighth notes, it would be like this.
• 50:53
  Steve: If I was playing 16th notes, and I'm not saying you can't, I'm just saying that's a lot harder.
• 51:09
  Steve: So I'm not, here's what happens.
• 51:12
  Steve: You've got your eighth notes, you're figuring out how to use your eighth notes.
• 51:15
  Steve: That's the most important thing you can walk away from today, is those eighth notes.
• 51:20
  Steve: But if you establish those eighth notes and they're feeling good to you, you can go back to the practice side and keep working on getting better at your scales.
• 51:27
  Steve: Get into the 16th note at 80 beats per minute, right?
• 51:30
  Steve: You can keep working, that's what you're doing over there is getting faster, right?
• 51:35
  Steve: That's the whole point over there.
• 51:38
  Steve: Over here on the playing side, you're not ready.
• 51:40
  Steve: You don't have 16th notes at 80 beats per minute.
• 51:44
  Steve: Hypothetically.
• 51:45
  Steve: So, what do you do?
• 51:47
  Steve: You tip your hat to them, you dip your toes into them.
• 51:50
  Steve: And how do you do that?
• 51:52
  Steve: By doing a pull off or doing a hammer on.
• 51:56
  Steve: That's all you gotta do.
• 51:58
  Steve: Watch.
• 51:59
  Steve: So here's my eighth notes.
• 52:03
  Steve: I'm gonna do a sixteenth note now.
• 52:05
  Steve: Watch this.
• 52:37
  Steve: When I go to that sixteenth note, it adds energy.
• 52:42
  Steve: So if you're struggling with eighth notes, don't worry about sixteenth notes.
• 52:45
  Steve: That's not gonna help you.
• 52:47
  Steve: But if you're establishing that eighth note and it's kind of feeling good and you're kind of figuring that out, you can move into doing some sixteenth notes just by doing a simple pull off or a simple hammer on.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: Ba da dump, bump, bum, bump, bump, bum, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bum, bada, bump.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: Bump, bump, bump, baby, bump, bada, dump, bump, bum, bump, baby, bump.
• 53:12
  Steve: And again, guys, at the end of this class today, we still haven't established direction and landing on the right note at the right time, blah, blah, blah.
• 53:23
  Steve: We'll get to all that stuff.
• 53:25
  Steve: Because it's just above here, it's just above where we are.
• 53:29
  Steve: But what I'm saying is there's no reason to worry about all that if we can't play the groove.
• 53:34
  Steve: Because you're just gonna overwhelm your brain.
• 53:36
  Steve: It's too much to think about.
• 53:38
  Steve: And if you don't know the scale, you can't think about the eighth note.
• 53:43
  Steve: You guys all understand that?
• 53:44
  Steve: Like, it's gotta be building blocks, that's the whole point.
• 53:48
  Steve: You gotta build this, and the parts that are missing, those are the parts you gotta keep trying to focus on where the problem is.
• 53:55
  Steve: You don't have to become hyper-psychotic about how fast your 16th notes are.
• 54:00
  Steve: You can.
• 54:02
  Steve: But then you're just focusing on this one part of your playing, you're not focusing on all the rest of this stuff.
• 54:07
  Steve: That's why I'm saying some of the things that we work on are kind of large picture, seeing the whole fretboard.
• 54:14
  Steve: And then we've got micro things.
• 54:16
  Steve: We're trying to focus on picking or moving between strings or 16th, or whatever, whatever it is.
• 54:22
  Steve: Everybody's different.
• 54:23
  Steve: But when we move over in the playing realm, not the practice realm, but the playing realm, playing realm, I am not practicing.
• 54:30
  Steve: I'm playing.
• 54:34
  Steve: As soon as you go, oh, why couldn't I do that lick?
• 54:37
  Steve: And you're trying to figure that, okay, you're back in practice realm.
• 54:39
  Steve: That's okay.
• 54:40
  Steve: But just understand you're no longer in playing realm.
• 54:43
  Steve: You moved over to practice again.
• 54:46
  Steve: If you want to be in playing realm, you got to follow the rules over here and make music.
• 54:51
  Steve: That's what you're trying to do, is make music.
• 54:53
  Steve: It's not gonna be your fastest and your best.
• 54:57
  Steve: It's supposed to be musical.
• 55:01
  Steve: And when you come across something that you're struggling with, you suck that thing and put it over here.
• 55:06
  Steve: Now it's in your practice realm and you work on it.
• 55:09
  Steve: And you come back over here to playing realm again and you practice.
• 55:12
  Steve: You work on these things.
• 55:13
  Steve: You're trying to put all this together.
• 55:15
  Steve: Does that kind of make sense, guys?
• 55:19
  Steve: Every day or at least every week, you guys should be working on practicing, which is studying, understanding, you know, all that kind of stuff that we talked about.
• 55:28
  Steve: But you should also, if this is something that's important to you, you got to spend time in the playing realm, not just the practicing realm.
• 55:35
  Steve: And then assume when you come over to the side of playing, it's all gonna work.
• 55:39
  Steve: It that's not true.
• 55:40
  Steve: It's not even that's not even reasonable.
• 55:43
  Steve: You gotta practice playing.
• 55:46
  Steve: Right?
• 55:47
  Steve: You got to spend time practicing playing.
• 55:51
  Steve: And then come back over here with whatever you need and then come back over here.
• 55:57
  Steve: Right?
• 55:57
  Steve: And when you make those backing tracks, when you jam along with something and you send it to your studio instructor, he can look at that and go, Steve, when I want you to notice this.
• 56:04
  Steve: When you're playing, every time you start playing a new phrase, it starts on a downbeat.
• 56:08
  Steve: Let's try and do some stuff on the offbeat.
• 56:10
  Steve: And then you go, oh, you know what?
• 56:12
  Steve: I never even thought about that before.
• 56:14
  Steve: Hey, Mike, when you listen to this, notice how all your phrases are the same length.
• 56:18
  Steve: Bump, bump, bum, bum, bum, bump, bump, bum.
• 56:21
  Steve: Let's change that up.
• 56:22
  Steve: Try and think about that a little bit.
• 56:23
  Steve: Oh, yeah, gosh, I never even thought about that before.
• 56:26
  Steve: Hey, Francois, when you're trying to do this thing, notice how your dynamics are the same every single time.
• 56:31
  Steve: Become aware of that.
• 56:32
  Steve: Write it on a piece of paper.
• 56:34
  Steve: Dynamics.
• 56:36
  Steve: You sound good, but it's just everything sounds exactly the same.
• 56:39
  Steve: Start thinking about your dynamics.
• 56:41
  Steve: Oh, that makes sense.
• 56:45
  Steve: You see, when you start thinking about playing and you think about those things, it's not about how fast you are, how smart you are, how many scale positions you know.
• 56:52
  Steve: It's does it sound real?
• 56:54
  Steve: Does it sound musical?
• 56:57
  Steve: Guys, any questions?
• 56:59
  Steve: Let's open up the floor for a little bit here.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_04: I guess the first question I would have for you is should we continue this next week?
• 57:14
  Steve: Do you think we should keep going with this?
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 57:17
  Steve: Okay.
• 57:19
  Steve: Okay, then what I would okay.
• 57:21
  Steve: Then what I would like from you guys, what I would like from you guys is over the next week, I need you to dive into this.
• 57:29
  Steve: So by next week, next Wednesday, you can come back with questions.
• 57:33
  Steve: You can come back with progress reports to tell me how things are going.
• 57:37
  Steve: I'm not expecting miracles in a week.
• 57:40
  Steve: I just want you to understand how the process works.
• 57:42
  Steve: So you can go, yeah, I get it.
• 57:44
  Steve: I obviously understand all the things I need to work on, but I understand what's going on.
• 57:47
  Steve: Because then we can keep building this thing.
• 57:53
  Steve: So, what's great about this way of thinking, this playing thing, is that it's what most of you have always wanted anyway, but you keep getting stuck over here in practice.
• 58:06
  Steve: And you're not figuring out how to sing on the instrument.
• 58:14
  Steve: And even next week or next month, it might not still be exactly where you want it to be, obviously.
• 58:18
  Steve: It's gonna take a little time.
• 58:20
  Steve: But as long as you start building out the fundamentals, because without rhythm, you got nothing, guys.
• 58:26
  Steve: Without connecting to the groove, you have nothing.
• 58:29
  Steve: I'm just being honest with you.
• 58:33
  Steve: You gotta connect to the groove.
• 58:34
  Steve: I always use this as an example.
• 58:36
  Steve: If I was to play this, if I was playing play that funky music, and I'm gonna solo over the top, the first thing I think is what key is it in?
• 58:47
  Steve: Oh, it's an E, E minor pentatonic.
• 58:54
  Steve: Next thing is what's the groove?
• 58:56
  Steve: Bop, bop, pop, bop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
• 58:59
  Steve: There it is.
• 59:00
  Steve: Bop deca deca deca deca, which would be my 16th notes.
• 59:04
  Steve: Those are the two that I got.
• 59:05
  Steve: So when I get in there, the groove is what I gotta go with.
• 59:18
  Steve: Ba-da-pa-pa-pa-pa-doopa bum ba da ba bump.
• 59:23
  Steve: Bada doopa ba ba bum.
• 59:25
  Steve: That's what I'm gonna do.
• 59:27
  Steve: If I get in there and go, it's not gonna sound like a solo.
• 59:36
  Steve: Right?
• 59:37
  Steve: That eighth note is the most important thing.
• 59:39
  Steve: Bada dun dun dun bum boom bum bada bum bump, throwing those sixteenth notes in to add some energy.
• 59:53
  Steve: Now, what to do and how to do it would be the next thing, right?
• 59:57
  Steve: Right now we're just learning how to navigate.
• 1:00:01
  Steve: Licks and, you know, all that kind of stuff, all that kind of stuff can come next.
• 1:00:05
  Steve: But we got to establish ourselves first.
• 1:00:08
  Steve: Do we what do we see?
• 1:00:10
  Steve: Not on a practice level, but on a playing level.
• 1:00:13
  Steve: What can we see unequivocally without any question?
• 1:00:16
  Steve: If somebody said, you know, Mike or Todd take a solo in play that funky music, or Greg, take a solo.
• 1:00:23
  Steve: You don't want to panic.
• 1:00:24
  Steve: You want to go, well, what am I dealing with here?
• 1:00:26
  Steve: What key is this?
• 1:00:28
  Steve: What's the groove?
• 1:00:29
  Steve: Where's the eighth note?
• 1:00:31
  Steve: And if you're good at meandering, you're gonna be able to come up with all kinds of cool stuff.
• 1:00:36
  Steve: If you're not, you're gonna go, why?
• 1:00:43
  Steve: Because that's what you practice.
• 1:00:47
  Steve: You see?
• 1:00:48
  Steve: We got to break out of practice and move into playing.
• 1:00:51
  Steve: So, guys, I'm gonna let you go because it's 11 o'clock, but hopefully this helped you.
• 1:00:54
  Steve: I will post it later today when this is done.
• 1:00:57
  Steve: Guys, write down your questions over the week.
• 1:01:00
  Steve: Let's dive further into this next week.
• 1:01:02
  Steve: Okay?
• 1:01:03
  Steve: We're in no hurry.
• 1:01:04
  Steve: We got a lot of time together.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_09: Hey, Steve, sorry I was I was late, but uh, did you want to say anything about uh just class and professionalism with regard to uh like Dolly Pardon and kind of like uh how that's helped you get where you are today?
• 1:01:17
  Steve: Say that again, one more time.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_09: Class and professionalism.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_09: I mean, that's something that you have, and that's something that she exonerated.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_09: And it's an important part of playing as well.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_09: It's not just about about the No.
• 1:01:27
  Steve: Well, listen, let me summarize this.
• 1:01:29
  Steve: Don't ever burn bridges.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_09: Thank you.
• 1:01:32
  Steve: That I mean, that's the thing, is I, you know, one thing that I'm always proud of is when people meet me, they always say, you know, you're just like you are in your videos.
• 1:01:40
  Steve: And that's something that I take pride in because I've always told myself I never want to make something that my kids would be embarrassed of.
• 1:01:46
  Steve: That's bottom line, right?
• 1:01:49
  Steve: That's so the thing about the industry being from North Dakota, where you know nobody and you're not connected to anybody, and then all of a sudden being connected to a lot of people in the industry is your attitude.
• 1:02:01
  Steve: And it's funny how I meet people all the time that will go, like, I can tell you all kinds of stories about stuff, but meeting people that are, you know, artists and companies and stuff, and they're like, man, I love your attitude.
• 1:02:12
  Steve: Like, you're just a really great guy to be around.
• 1:02:13
  Steve: And I'm not stroking my own ego, guys.
• 1:02:15
  Steve: I'm just saying the better you are as a player and the better you are to work with, the easier you are to work with, the more gigs you get.
• 1:02:21
  Steve: Bottom line, easy.
• 1:02:24
  Steve: Nobody will tell you I'm difficult, but people will tell you that I'm a perfectionist.
• 1:02:28
  Steve: Okay.
• 1:02:29
  Steve: If you and I were in a band together and we show up for rehearsal and you're working on learning the songs, the rehearsal has now been canceled.
• 1:02:39
  Steve: The rehearsal is not for you to learn the songs, the rehearsal is for us to play together.
• 1:02:44
  Steve: That's what a rehearsal is.
• 1:02:46
  Steve: Practice is you learning the songs.
• 1:02:49
  Steve: If we show up for band practice and you're still working on your songs over in the corner for the next 30 minutes and I'm doing this, why am I here?
• 1:02:57
  Steve: You see?
• 1:02:59
  Steve: So professionalism is that too.
• 1:03:01
  Steve: It's it's showing up.
• 1:03:02
  Steve: You don't have to be perfect, guys.
• 1:03:04
  Steve: I'm not even close to that.
• 1:03:05
  Steve: But you show up prepared for whatever it is you're gonna do.
• 1:03:08
  Steve: That's the whole point of what we're talking about today.
• 1:03:10
  Steve: I'm not asking you to be perfect.
• 1:03:11
  Steve: I'm not asking you to know everything.
• 1:03:12
  Steve: What I'm saying is if the situation comes up and you got to play, do you know where to go and do you know what to do?
• 1:03:19
  Steve: And let's keep just expanding that.
• 1:03:22
  Steve: So you can get to a place where you feel good about yourself, you are confident with yourself.
• 1:03:26
  Steve: You know you got more to learn, and you're gonna be way better next year than you are this year.
• 1:03:31
  Steve: But at least you're working on all the tools you need to get there.
• 1:03:35
  Steve: So, okay.
• 1:03:36
  Steve: Thank you.
• 1:03:37
  Steve: All right, guys.
• 1:03:39
  Steve: Yep.
• 1:03:39
  Steve: Have a good week, guys.
• 1:03:40
  Steve: God bless.
• 1:03:40
  Steve: Talk to you later.
• 1:03:41
  Steve: Thank you.
• 1:03:41
  Steve: Thank you so much.
• 1:03:43
  Steve: Bye, guys.
• 1:03:44
  Steve: Bye.