Week 3: saying it (phrasing, space and legato)
Week three of a 32-week guitar practice path: no new notes, only delivery. Short phrases and real silence, or hammer-ons and pull-offs that let a line pour.
- Week
- 3 of 32
- Days
- 7
- Played as
- blues or rock
No new notes this week in either track, and no new scale. Same box, same bends. What changes is how the notes are delivered, which is the difference between a player who knows the shape and one worth listening to.
This is the first week the tracks genuinely part company. Blues works on space — short phrases, call and response, and the silence that makes a phrase land. Rock works on flow — hammer-ons and pull-offs, so a run arrives as one continuous movement instead of a row of separate attacks. They are opposite solutions to the same problem: a run of evenly picked notes says nothing.
Blues treatment
Phrasing: space, call and response, and landing on the root
No new notes this week, and no new technique. Same box, same bends. What changes is how you say them, which is the difference between a player who knows the scale and a player worth listening to.
The mechanism is call and response — the oldest device in the idiom. Play a short phrase, leave a gap the same length, then answer it. The gap is the part people skip, and it is the part that makes the phrase land; a listener cannot hear a sentence if the next one has already started. Three notes is usually enough for a call. If a phrase needs eight, it is probably two phrases with the silence removed.
The daily session · ~25 min
- Warm upHands + a bend refresh4 min
- Box 1, phrase fragmentsThree-note sentences4 min
- Call and responseSay it, answer it6 min
- Three-note phrases over the formLand on A6 min
- Jam, 12-bar blues in APut it together5 min
Check yourself
- Play a three-note phrase, count a full bar of silence, then answer it. Four times without rushing the gap.
- Over a chorus, count your phrases — can you get through twelve bars on six or fewer?
- Record thirty seconds and listen back. Is there any silence in it at all?
Reference
Rock treatment
Legato: hammer-ons, pull-offs, and connected runs across the box
Legato is the other way to get around the neck, and the reason it sounds different from picking is not speed but attack — hammered and pulled notes have no pick transient, so runs sound poured rather than struck.
Evenness is the whole difficulty. Hammered notes tend to come out quieter than picked ones and pulled notes louder and sharper, so a legato run played carelessly has a lumpy dynamic profile that no amount of gain hides. Practise the pairs slowly and listen for equal volume before you chase any tempo at all.
The daily session · ~25 min
- Warm upHands + a bend refresh4 min
- Box 1, hammer & pull pairsEven volume4 min
- Connected legato runsSmooth and fast6 min
- Legato lines over the vampFlow then attack6 min
- Jam, minor rock vampPut it together5 min
Check yourself
- Play hammer-on/pull-off pairs across the box with every note at the same volume.
- Run a legato line through box 1 with only the first note of each string picked.
- Over the vamp, play one legato phrase and one hard-picked phrase. Do they sound like the same player?
Reference
How the week runs
Whichever accent you pick, the material stays the same for all 7 days and the tempo and intent move. Day one takes it slowly, day two chases clean notes, day three brings it to target tempo and into the jam, day four pushes past comfortable, and day five drops back to tempo to record and listen. Days six and seven are yours.
You can switch accent any day without losing your place — it is the same week either way, so week 3 means the same thing in both.