Ballad soloing - dynamics and phrasing, Lesson By Darius Wave Options

[Grappa]

Original lesson: Ballad soloing - dynamics and phrasing by Darius Wave

Gab asked me to have a go at this so here it is.. Hard to do well and a couple of wobbles but hopefully not too painful on the ears.. Si

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[Ben Higgins]

Hello Si, this is a great performance of this lesson.

You've got a lot of feel and that comes across well in the bending and vibrato. I also like the tone you've got going on here too, suits the piece very well.

The first thing that struck me was that I missed the harder picking that occurs at the beginning of Darius's first couple of phrases, the ones that occur after the volume swells. Some of the notes have a real twang to them as the pick bites through them. If you can get that snap in the phrasing it'd give it more of an edge.

The tone itself may also contribute to whether you can get that sharp treble with hard picking or not. Not sure.

The only other thing I thought could have come through better was the slide licks, like at 0:20. That's it. Everything else sounded good to me!

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[Darius Wave]

Hey there!

First of all thanx for preparing my lesson. I belive your one of those who can get really high with their grades for take - as long as you have patience because in my ballad soloing lessons it's a lla bout tons of tiny details that helps to translate emotions in music.

Let me strat from the good things - it's draft at this point but a very strong draft. Tone match is perfect - maybe slightly a little more gain than I used but not enough to destroy dynamics response. Frequency wise I can hear it's an excellent match. Plus...we know the magic of neck pickup tone in 22 fretted guitar There are some more goodies here - like over all good pitch and cleaness of your playing.

Now let's go through a few details:

0:15 prebend - it has to be more lazy, stretched for a longer time. It's not necessary that precisely matched with timing. You made it short and cut on the first beat of the bar. Let the listener enjoy slowly falling note instead

0:20 - this lick has different rhythm than you played (recheck the tabs or lesson video). Also - here we need to play a few notes with totally soft pick strokes...almost like touching the strings instead of regular picking. There's a need to make pick flat to the string the get 100% tone with no noise of the pick.

0:23 - almost there but we need to accent a few notes much harder to get that "mean" sound (as Gilbert said once). In your approach it sounds a little to flat and too even (dynamics-wise). We need to "underline" w few note there to add some additional color and tension.

0:36 slide - it has to be legato slide with particular rhythm value. Not an ornament "preslide". You play it too fast. Match the connection between those two notes into precise 16th notes legato, executed with slide instead of hammer-on or pull-off


0:40-0:42 - there are pauses/breaks between some of those notes. It's kind of tension builder as well. Again it sounded flat without them.

0:50 - you've missed to play one note

0:51 - it should be highly accented moment where we can hear both notes together with huge attack and clarified pick sound


0:58 vibrato - you went a little above the pitch and then started to vibrate. Remember to always have a "full release" points in your vibrato, to make shure that you cross "perfect pitch point". Otherwise it sound a little like intonation issue.


Without getting into details for further part we can detect few of above as a summary. There are essentially missing breaks, flattened dynamics and some notes being playing with pick instead of legato. At some points there also happens notes or picking that wasn't in the original lesson


I know it all looks scary but you have no reasons to feel bad. This kind of lessons have different type of tasks and purpose of learning colors instead of speed or something. I highly believe You're one of those who can deliver of of best takes over this lesson by far. I'm also 100% sure it's only about you deciding to spend some more time an getting those details done to have a perfect take. I was not able to detect a single limitation in you playing, that could disturb you doing this. You have a great tone, overall good touch and timing. You can be an excellent player if you start to take care of smallest details

Well done and congratulations!

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[Gabriel Leopardi]

Hey mate! Great to find this one here!

I can say that I'm impressed! The take is much better from what I expected. I'm not pre-judging you, but I usually recommend this lesson because it seems simple but it's very demanding regarding elements that guitarists usually miss like dynamics, bending, vibrato, and other expressing elements that make the difference.

Your submit is really good. Your technique is solid and your timing precise. I also think that your vibrato and bending are on the right track as well as some other techniques like legato (trills), and picking.

This lesson seems to be infinite, the more I listen to Darius take, the more details I find and that's why it's a killer exercise for students here. I think that he has already given excellent feedback regarding each detail that you could adjust in order to take your playing to a new level.

I strongly recommend you to take your time to work on them, while you keep on working on some other stuff.

Another thing that I'd like to suggest is to use the backing track to jam. Create variations of this licks, and combine them with your own ones. That's the best way to incorporate this stuff into your own playing.

Ok mate, I hope to see more from you at the forum!

Cheers,

Gab.-

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[Fran]

Pass: 7.7

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