I Was Completely Wrong About These Guys...

i got my first electric guitar in 1994 i was 15 years old at the time and the reason i got into guitar was for bands that were considered heavier at the time like guns and roses iron maiden later on i got into metallica which was really heavy at the time and i would study everything i could about guitar but mostly it was flashy technical stuff that that was really interesting to me i thought it was just cool at the time there was no internet so most of the things i learned was from magazines and there was this one magazine i think it was guitarist magazine at a time i bought all of them and at some point they had a special issue on the blues i didn't really know much about the blues of course i had heard about the blues i thought i knew about the blues with the pentatonic scale but that's it in that magazine there was a full transcription of two songs red house by jimi hendrix and the thrill is gone bb king i started looking at those learning a few licks and i got the the cassette tapes of those albums and i'm gonna be honest with you i didn't really see why why those guys were such references i i didn't really get it you know it wasn't very fast it wasn't flashy i still tried to learn the songs and you know i was like well it just doesn't sound like the original recording but that's fine i i i'm gonna go back to my maiden songs right so that was that basically i went back to the heavier stuff and eventually i think i was learning a metallica song in my bedroom and my mom calls me hey david come come check this out there's a guy on tv he he's a guitar player he looks cool he's like ah come on mom it's gonna be a jazz guy right i made my way through the living room and on tv there was this guy with long hair so okay that got my attention okay he's probably cool he had an electric guitar and he was he was just talking about his influences and he played in between the interview too and it sounded really really cool i'd never heard of that guy it was awesome and he mentioned jimi hendrix that he was such a big fan of jimi hendrix but what i heard on tv had nothing to do with hendrix well eventually i found out that the guy on tv was joe satriani he was talking about the guitar and how when he heard that jimi hendrix had died he quit the football team and started to get deep into guitar september 18 1970 jimi hendrix dies i'm still on the football team at that moment but as soon as i hear about it i take my helmet off and go back to the gym confront the coach and uh tell him i'm quitting the football team and uh in a moment of brilliance he just gives me one look and says okay so at that time i was probably about two three years into my electric guitar journey and i had discovered joe satriani and that really changed a lot of things for me i started learning his music as best as i could and picked up his albums and collected all of them ever since been a huge fan and this thing that he said where he said that you know i the reason i'm playing guitar was for jimi hendrix really bothered me because my first experience of hendrix and bb king at the same time was not a very good one i just didn't get it i thought those guys were not really good players what they played was very simple uh maybe not so much for hendrix but to me henrik sounded kind of sloppy and i just didn't get it it was all uh pentatonic based you know the first position that i learned just a month into guitar and i was able to play that scale it's like that's not really complex there's nothing flashy about that you can't play fast like what's come on what's the deal making a career with one position the minor pentatonic scale come on well thankfully i didn't stop there i went back to that magazine and i decided well since joe satriani likes hendrix i'm going to learn red house this time i'm really going to try to nail the the notes like everything perfectly and i tried and i completely failed i didn't know why at the time because i had learned all the notes note per note they were transcribed in the magazine and i was really playing with the metronome on tempo i had slowed things down but still it sounded nothing like hendrix so i thought well maybe hendrix is a little too complex i'm going to try the throws gone song because there's a few last notes still pentatonic based same thing i miserably failed i was playing over the metronome and it just didn't sound right so i gave that up again and i went back to my my favorite bands you know but still in the back of my mind i would every once in a while go back to those cassette tapes i think i got the cd at that time and as i listened to them i started to appreciate them a little more still not my favorite genre it was still a metal head but can't remember exactly why that particular day things changed i started really getting into the music and that was actually the thrill is gone which was to me at the time the lesser impressive one but i started really recognizing something in there that i i couldn't put my finger on it it wasn't the notes it wasn't the scale it wasn't the speed but there was something and then it just hit me it was the rhythm the way that bb king was playing was so different from anything else i had learned see by that time i was pretty fast on the guitar and i had all the exercises down a lot of sequences playing with the metronome and i was pretty precise with the metronome and what i heard uh in the throws gone was nothing like i was doing i mean yeah not just the speed but it was the way that he was playing over the metronome or you know the rhythm section it was not in tempo but it sounded great and i thought what what is going on so i looped apart over and over and i tapped my foot but i couldn't really tap and then i really locked into the drummer and i locked into the drummer and i realized that whenever bb king was playing a note it wasn't on the beat it wasn't even on one of those subdivisions it was a little bit before and then i went back to the right house recording and it was the same exact thing hendrix was playing just before that beat and that was the thing that kept me going back to those two songs over and over and over even the first time i heard it it didn't quite resonate with me but i did recognize that there was something a little different i didn't know what but there was something that just kept me going back to it so that was my first introduction to playing before the beat and then i started recognizing that and joe satriani's playing too he's not playing on the beat well i'll take that back maybe the first few albums he was playing on the beat very synchronized with everything almost quantized although it wasn't quantized i'm thinking surfing with the alien those songs very linear but i started recognizing and and such as playing like those early influences jimi hendrix i got it so i started listening to a lot more of hendrix's music and and i truly became a massive fan and i understood and same with bb king and same with all the other guys and so i wanted to apply that to my instrument that is a problem because at the time when i studied something on the guitar it was a very methodical approach and it was a very mathematical approach everything had to fit perfectly and it was very brainy [Music] so if i took an exercise a sequence three note per string sequence and i had to play it over a metronome i would make sure that i understood all the subdivisions and that each of the subdivisions were mathematically correct very precise [Music] and that's the approach i took to try to implement this playing before the beat type of thing so what i did is play everything perfectly as perfect as i could as far as the tempo goes the distance between each note equal but just move that a little bit before the beat [Music] until if you hear what it sounded like i did a little experiment here so this is what i tried i recorded myself playing over the backing track and i made sure to record myself playing really on the beat and what i'm going to do is take this track and move it slightly before the beat should work right yeah it sounds like crap so yeah that clearly was not the right approach so i kept listening and there was one thing in addition to that rhythm thing that they were doing playing before the beats that was really different from anything else i had heard from iron maiden guns and roses and all those bands and it was uh kind of the kind of the emotions that i felt when i heard those guys play it was a very emotional type of playing it was kind of imperfect but it was very emotional i thought about that quite a bit and i realized that well when these guys were playing they weren't trying to be exactly perfect but they were just trying to live a moment and capture that moment when they were recording and maybe by doing that that's what kind of like created this sense of rhythm and perfection playing before the beat maybe it was just all emotion driven so i gave that a try i threw in a backing track and i thought to myself you know what i'm not even gonna think of the tempo or anything like that i'm going to try to feel that music and try to tie a story to it and i'm going to try to really take my time with that [Music] and that happened when i took my time when i really engaged with the emotional part of my being as i played i started playing in an imperfect way and i started playing before that beat i built confidence it was very confident moment for me just me the backing track and i got that feeling i wasn't playing like kendrix or bb king but i kind of had that thing i was living a moment at the time [Music] now here's the beauty of this learning how to play before the beat or learning how to feel to play before the beat really didn't change me as a musician i was able to add more emotions in my playing and and through that process i was able to discover who i was musically and to play like me which really unlocked so much it freed myself too from any kind of like unhealthy comparison that i might have with others or feelings of discouragement and that's because there's only me in the whole world no one sees the world exactly like i see it and so why not spend more time musically adding my own emotions to the music that i'm playing whether i'm improvising or writing something because in the end i don't want to be a clone of someone else i just want to express myself with those things all right let me show you how you can play before the beat it's actually really simple the only thing you need in order to do this is to feel the music here's a simple minor blues and g g minor pentatonic and you're going to start by thinking of a sentence an actual literal sentence with words i play the blues and instead of saying it like a robot would say it perfectly said with the tempo like i play the blues that's very robotic very synced with the tempo i want you to take liberties with this imagine that what you're saying is really important but you're going to deliver that message whenever you want to deliver it i play the blues i play the blues well it sounds lame when you say it but when you play it that's where magic happens so i play the blues it's a four note lick right take your time with it you heard it there well i played in the way that bb king is playing and and hendrix and all those blues guys [Music] it wasn't on the beat it was after the beat [Music] [Applause] [Music] it'll become more and more natural as you gain confidence doing this [Music] that playing before the beat thing was the key that unlocked my appreciation of that music and i started listening more and more and as i did i realized that they were not just using a simple minor pentatonic scale they were doing some really cool stuff with it and i'm going to share with you some of those discoveries right here

Channel: David Wallimann

Views: 370,467

Keywords: guitar, electric, axe, fx, fractal, audio, wallimann, lesson, music, gear, fusion, rock, blues, guitar rig, bias, positive grid, modes, music theory, scales, pentatonic, ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, locrian, minor, major, david wallimann, guitar solo, backing track, vola, vola guitars, vola oz, guitar lesson

Id: BUI6B8m5BeQ

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2022