Some of this stuff is going to seem fairly simple.
The main theme to keep in mind here is you don’t
need to be too hip for the room, you don’t need
to always be worrying about blowing minds or being
flashy. What’s going to touch people is being soulful.
What’s going to touch people is playing a melody that
has meaning to you. Because if it has meaning to you,
it’s going to have meaning to them. So have intent.
Whatever you do, know what you’re going for and mean
every note you play.
So here’s one that offers less movement. This is really
one to more demonstrate attitude and intention and how
you can really milk response out of doing something that
isn’t necessarily shreddy or chops-oriented.
A lot of this music, especially in the jam community, in
the blues community, the Americana community, it’s not so
much about chops; it’s not so much about how fast or
complicated your playing is, it’s more about how committed
you are, how much melodic content does it have, how much is
it serving the song and being connected to the song?
So if I were to do something that was primarily one note, I
could do something pretty exciting. I could, say, start with
a note being in E, being in the five of the A, and I’m going
to start by bending the four on the G string to match that
note on the E string. Carlos did that a lot. Now, he moved
around with it. Jimmy did that, too. But what I’m going to
show you is how to just stay on the one thing and milk it
for intensity.
