Groove comes and goes

[Christian Miller]

Well depends really. Sometimes you want to be consistently on top, sometimes consistently behind by just the right amount. The main thing as I understand is consistency. (And if you can’t play right in the middle, I daresay you can’t do the other things.)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bop Head]

Well depends really. Sometimes you want to be consistently on top, sometimes consistently behind by just the right amount. The main thing as I understand is consistency. (And if you can’t play right in the middle, I daresay you can’t do the other things.)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you are playing solo and not rhythm you can even play around consciously with the amount of being behind, before or on top. Or it happens rather subconsciously to be precise but in a controlled way which means you are listening to your self all the time and adapt accordingly to what you hear.

Groove is a physical thing, not an intellectual one. If you are walking you are also not thinking all the time "Now I have to put my right foot in front and now the left one.". *) The conscious brain is much to slow for controlling body movements. And if you stumble you will immediately realize it and your body will react with counter-movements.

And I'll repeat it again and again: Blues is the teacher.



*) Unless you have a physical handicap. My girlfriend's best friend has a little bit of spasticity in one of her legs and if she is tired that leg may fold suddenly and she will fall to the ground if she does not control her movements consciously.

[Bop Head]

Atm, I have a 3-hour sleep deprivation and feeling numb. No groove happening at all.
Hence my theory got proven: it is all about feeling. And energy.
edit: somewhere here someone mentioned that time and feel are not the same. That seemed plausible but it kinda becomes obvious at some point.

Anyway, the OPs question was "What's your experience with that?"

A state of being over-tired is the easiest starting point for getting into a mental state of flow for me.

[DawgBone]

Sounds like university of North Texas lol.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's funny. We had one of those north TX guys at the school who taught jazz 1 but the guy I am referencing was a bone player who came up in brazilian/latin bands. Total ball breaker about meter. At the time he was in a dark place and made sure people around him existed there with him.....being a a whiplash level instructor cost him his tenure. Glad I played guitar, was able to fly under the radar in his class. He was def anti groove.

[Mick-7]

The groove has to be in you and has to be available immediately.

"Let that boy boogie-woogie, it's in him and it's got to come out!" - John Lee Hooker

[Bop Head]

"Let that boy boogie-woogie, it's in him and it's got to come out!" - John Lee Hooker

I shook his hand in 1991. Probably I got infected, haha.

But joking aside actually before that I was listening to African-American blues for one year allmost exclusively (John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Jimi Hendrix w/ Curtis Knight and the Squires, Sunnyland Slim, Howlin' Wolf etc. etc.) because I found the pop music of the late 80ies so boring and plastic.

And later I played a lot of funk and reggae live with a band.

[Bop Head]

Very interesting. I have heard this advice before but never really follow through with it. Instead I was improvising with a bunch of different rhythms at a time (2 minutes for each rhythm). Sounds promising

Listening to and playing along with reggae tracks (meaning rhythm guitar) is a good lesson for how note length relates to groove and how different parts are intertwined and locked in.

From rocksteady ...

... over classic grooves ...

... to more modern hiphop influenced grooves.

The changes are not too complicated to figure out and you can concentrate on locking into the groove.

[RLetson]

Mention of James Brown reminded me of a joke-not-a-joke:

A guitarist is applying for a job with the Famous Flames, and the band interviewer says, "Can you play this?" And plays the signature "Chicken" guitar lick.

The applicant says, "Sure," and echoes it.

And the interviewer says, "For two hours?"

[AKA]

In the words of the great Victor Wooten “You can’t hold no groove if you ain’t got no pocket.”