Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

So Awesome. It’s good to see what’s possible. The soft almost ghost like notes are really nice

Thank you guys! I played a little extra.... that's just like "Private Lesson" I normally add a little and see student's eyes... that's how we develope new ideas.

Amp is Musucmaster Bass Amp and Beth Reverb.

Tomo

Hey Blue Monkers... thanks for all the inspiration and learning. Here's my second Blue Monk video, this time doing Melody 1 + Melody 2 + solo etude. Few things I tried to do on this one compared to last time:

- Relax - I see from the videos how tense I get, especially in my face. I tried to remember to smile and breathe. Hard for me!
- Smoother phrasing - trying to learn from Tomo and all of you
- Thumb position. I tried to remember the feel of the chromatic exercises. I think I did better than last time, but it still came over the top a few times before I noticed it
- lighter touch - this was still hardest for me on the first (high E) string
- volume contrast between melody and 37 chords

Great performance, Andy! Thank you so much for your willingness to share your progress with us. It's so inspiring and helpful to follow along.

I want to repeat what Kurt pointed out: "real practice is more fixing than learning something new!"
You learned it, you can play it, and now you are working on playing it even better. Forget about tempo and refine the details!

Great job learning blue monk Andy! I felt the timing was really good and steady throughout nicely done

this is wonderful everyone.
thank you for contributing to this thread!
i have not started bmc yet but i am actively following, learning so much, i will start in a week or two. still working on daily sched and now r37 swing groove for daily.

Thank you Sammi, Jeff and Sunil for encouragement!

"real practice is more fixing than learning something new!” very true and so important!

Also practice is not just repeating same thing. Making it better each time.

Tomo

Thank you Sunil for noticing! Most people learn parts and pracrtice fast! Repeat a lot without reviewing so these people could develop some bad habits without noticing.... so most people could saved and developed some bad habits. I used to press the fret wire so hard! I picked the strings so hard and I used to break strings very often.

Play, practice slow is super important!
Feel rhythm and groove deeply!
Keep moving your body to feel music!

Listen!
Play, record...
Listen!
Repeat....

There are many great threads here at the forum!
We should start "Alternate Picklng Challenge"

1) Chromatic Scale 1212
2) R 3 7 Swing Groove
3) ?

Tomo

I made this video "Blue Monk Melody" for my YouTube Channel. Not to publish it yet. You can take a look if you are intersted.... Thank you for watching this video. Great melody!

Tomo

Thanks for sharing this Tomo! This breaks everything down for us. I was counting along to your playing and didn’t count it right the first time so went back and second time got it. Also the one where you’re talking about how we want to hear the chords when we’re just playing the melody. And then later playing the melody and also adding the chord fills. Going to try this.

So after listening to Friday’s livestream I have a question about the Blue Monk melody…
In the fifth and sixth measures I always looked at the melody as going from the 3rd to the 5th chromatically of the Eb7 chord and then the 5th to the b7 of the Eb7 chord chromatically.
It seemed like you were saying the sixth measure is actually implying the #4 diminished chord.
So should the melody be seen as going from the b5 to the bb7 chromatically of the E diminished chord?

I realize it doesn’t change the sound of the melody at all but it changes the way that I imagine Monk came up with the melody when he wrote it.

Thank you Rich for watching GW LIvestream on Friday!

Original music has #IV Dim7 on the 6th bar. But I teach simple 145 for simplicity.
Then you can play #IV Dim7 arpeggios even you play/hear simple IV chord on the 6 bar.

Correct! So any blues form. Technically you can play #IV dim7 sound/arpeggio any time as long as you resolve back to I. BB King often play that Dim7 arpeggios from top of blues form.

I love using #IV Dim7 arpeggio and V Aug arpeggios in Blues. You can use Maj triads and you can use a pair of minor triads too. (b7 9 5 & R M3 6)

Tomo

Good job Clay!

Thank you Andy!

Tomo

Great thread!

Tomo

Hi everyone. Did you watch the livestream about blue monk melody.
I was inspired by watching Tomo was playing and counting at the same time. So I tried this. Here you go.