Original lesson: In the style of Gary Moore - Ballad & Blues by Piotr Kaczor

Hi Nico, I think you deal very well with this lesson. It's a tough one with a lot of bending and vibrato and 'blues timing'

The main areas you want to concentrate your energy on are

-Bending. You can bend well.. I know you can. But in some cases you're going too sharp with the bends. I'll link it to the next issue...

-Vibrato. As I say on your other REC, you're taking the string a bit too far away from it's starting pitch and adding the vibrato but not letting the vibration to return to its starting pitch. The listener doesn't get the original note as a reference point, so the note sounds 'out of key'.

I think I can link both your bending and vibrato to one thing: You're heavy handed in your approach. You perhaps approach these two areas with a little too much vigour.

There's only one real occasion where I'll bend too sharp and that's if I'm way too captured in the moment and I play too aggressively. You may have noticed that many players bend too sharp when they're playing live due to the extra energy of the performance. So, I think that you're putting in too much energy perhaps?

You've got the ability to nail those elements because I've heard and seen it, you just need to introduce a little subtlety and take a bit longer to allow yourself to slowly approach your bending and vibrato practise so that your success rate is closer to 100% than 50/50. I hope that makes some sense?

Hi Nico,

This lesson is a good choice to polish your playing. I think thta Ben is totally right about the two main elements to work on this take: bending and vibrato. Gary's style was based on killer bends and vibrato, and that's why this lesson is so demanding on these areas.

What to fix? Well, it has been well described by Ben but it's basically related to the pitch of your bends, and the consistence of your vibrato which sometimes is played too soon, too wide, and other times the vibration is not going connected with the backing's groove.

I think that one of the best way to polish this is to play along with the original lesson to emulate a bit the instructor's vibrato and bending. It's not to copy his style, it's mostly to control a bit your own playing.

Keep on the hard work.

Hey there Nico!

First of all that's a really great lesson to study and your tone chocie is very good.

From the good things:
- your timing doesn't leave much to complain - it's more about that specific blues kind of rhythm attempt, it's hard to describe in words. Blues timing is swinging a little (don't misunderstand with shuflle groove). Sometimes we play a little in front of the beat and sometimes we delay notes.
- very good tone choice and proper position change while final part comes in
- left and right hand sync
- unwanted noises muting - just a few spots to fix. The basic rules is we never leave strings untouched and we try to avoid unnecessary movements while there is a break in our playing (they could cause some scratching and similar noises)

Things to fix:
- pitch. I can all it as overall pitch of your vibrato and bends. I remember spotting this in one of your previous takes. I feel it is better this time...at least 50-60% better but still not perfect. This problem has been described before and I think you're currently working on how to fix it so I won't get into details again

Overall take is pleasant to listen and from a listeners point of view it'sa piece of good job

Pass: 6.3