Stick and Carot

This month Ron's giving us a nice minor blues vamp to work on. The left hand groove is a straightforward root-fifth-octave pattern with the colour coming from double stops in the right hand. The trick is to pull the funky, bluesy rock feel out of the interplay between the two hands. As for the double stops (two notes played at the same time) I like to alternate between playing both notes with one finger and using individual fingers for each note. I also like looking for notes either one or two frets above or below the written notes that sound good. Almost always there is something that sounds nice really close by. When I play double stops with one finger, my other fingers act like drumsticks, tapping out rhythms. When playing them with individual fingers, I invariably ending up playing more melodically but still try to lay back and keep the funky feel.

Try playing along with the MP3, then set your drum machine to a moderate funk beat and groove. I'd suggest soloing in the right hand with a C Blues scale or check out Steve's latest Spinal Column and tryout the Dorian Modes for each of the different chords.

carotandstick.pdf
carot1.mp3
carot2.mp3