First chorus: four bars in A
A four-bar blues phrase using only week 1-4 material: box 1, one bend, and silence where it belongs.
- Style
- blues
- Written in
- A
- Length
- 4 bars
- Feel
- shuffle
- Tempo
- ♩=92
Numbers are the order you play them, so notes sharing a number sound together. Drop the tempo until it is clean, then bring it back up. Each section has its own play button — learn them one at a time.
Written in A, and the writing below describes it there. Move it to another key and the shape does not change, only where its root sits — which is the difference between knowing a lick and knowing a fret number.
Bars 1-2: the call
Three notes and a bend, then stop. The rest of bar 2 is silence, and it is written in rather than left over — the phrase only lands because nothing follows it immediately.
- 1A · string 4, fret 7
- 2C · string 3, fret 5
- 3C · string 3, fret 5bend to fret 6
- 4A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
Bars 3-4: the answer
The descending run out of box 1, resolving to the root. Same shape you learned in week 1; the only new thing here is where it sits in time.
- 1C · string 1, fret 8
- 2A · string 1, fret 5
- 3G · string 2, fret 8
- 4E · string 2, fret 5
- 5D · string 3, fret 7
- 6C · string 3, fret 5
- 7A · string 4, fret 7vibrato
The first thing on the path you can play start to finish and have it sound like music rather than an exercise. Four bars, no new material, and everything inside box 1 at the 5th fret.
Play it against the backing at 92 and resist filling the gap in bar 2. If you can leave that silence intact you have understood more about phrasing than most players manage in a year.
The vocabulary it uses
None of this is new material. Every phrase here is a lick from earlier in the path, arranged — which is the argument the piece exists to make: a solo is vocabulary in an order, not a separate talent.
Where this fits
This caps week 4 of the blues path — the rhythm side (playing the form, not over it). Learn it fixed and from memory: playing the same thing twice on purpose is a harder discipline than improvising, and it is the one thing you finish the path able to show someone.