Awesome! I'll add some more comments soon. How do you like my new background? I redid my camera setup, trying to make it look a bit nicer.

@robert it's art in the making. It almost looks like youre using a green screen !

Your new background is a real eye-catcher, @robert. Really well designed - all about the guitar 😊. It's really fun to look at.

This is by far your best background yet. And your shirt fits perfectly too.

Birgit

Birgit - wow that is really tasty! This is exactly the approach I recommend - focus on simple phrases that tell a story. The rests in between work perfectly, because they support the licks. I love it. It sounds very pleasing. How did you come up with this solo? I think it’s the best one yet from you! The only thing I might suggest is a bit more gain or compression to make the notes sustain a bit more.

Craig - nice tone! The phrasing is really cool and varied. The half-step bend repeating idea at around 3:00 is uber cool! Wicked feel there! I also like the rests and then some bursts of cool ideas. This solo has a lot of feel and emotion.

Me - well I focus on a lot of repeating ideas. I find that works really well over slow blues tunes. I tried channel a bit of Albert King and Jonny Lang. I also wanted to have the first half a bit laid back and soft, so I switched pickups for the second part and hit the strings harder and played more aggressively. This is a common approach to make a strong impact on the listener.

Chuck - nice tone there. I like the slow delay, to create some beautiful space. I also notice you’re leaving a bit more space now in your phrasing. I also hear changing of pickups, which is a great nuance in itself.

Overall, I think this was great. I think that most of the feedback I will always give will include this - focus more on the ENDING of a lick than the lick itself. Sometimes I hear some nice lines from you guys that I don’t know where they will go, which is exiting. I am waiting with anticipation.

However, sometimes, the full lick/line falls flat because of how we end it. Maybe you forget where a good ending note is, or something unfamiliar happens and you feel lost or uncertain, etc. The lick ends unconvincingly and it sounds like confidence is missing (or we just messed up). That can happen to all of us.

However, those times when you go off into unfamiliar land and still end the lick in a powerful way, people will love it! Keep this in mind as you improvise - it's how you end licks that matters the most.

So, you can try and focus on learning licks that are staples (many of mine are I think) but what you try to take away from them is how to they end. Both rhythmically and in terms of the notes. Focus on finishing ideas well, and your solos will sound more confident.

Robert, thank you very much for taking the time to give us detailed feedback. I think your assessment is very important for us as a jammer group. I really appreciate it and take a lot from it.

You also asked me how I came up with the solo for jam 10.

I took various licks that I particularly liked from several solos that I found and put them together to see how they harmonized with the backing track. I adapted the licks to my level of difficulty and kept shifting them around within the 24 bars until I had the feeling that the licks and the breaks support the backing track.

I really enjoy doing this and I analyze the backing track very carefully beforehand.

Birgit

Birgit, you are doing a wonderful job of transcribing and learning ideas from different sources! I wonder if you would describe how YOU do this, so others may learn from it? I do this myself all the time and would love to learn more about your method. Maybe a new thread on this?