I have a deadline. I'm writing this newsletter on Thursday night, and if I can get it done by 9pm, Ms. Fretboard and I will have time to go to Amy's Ice Creams. 

I feel I should point out that I already wrote the first draft of this week's newsletter on Wednesday afternoon. But between then and now I have developed second thoughts about that first draft. And while I believe in the necessity of rewriting, sometimes it's better just to reach for a clean sheet of paper and try again.

There is some kind of observation lurking here about improvisation, about how each opportunity to solo provides a similarly fresh opportunity to invent something from scratch.

But in reality, this view of improvisation is a bit of a myth. At least for me, when I improvise, I know I'm drawing on a bunch of existing syntax and vocabulary. Which makes sense, really – even as I reach for my metaphorical clean sheet of paper to write a new draft of my letter, I'm using existing syntax and vocabulary to get the writing done.

And yet so many of us expect to do the equivalent of re-inventing the sentence when we go to take a solo. Which is remarkably impractical, really. Unless you're heavy into free jazz, you're going to need all the structural tools you can get, from big-picture stuff like playing the form, to more granular stuff like phrasing.

Now would be a good time in the proceedings to mention that I've spent the month of May teaching my Fingerstyle Five students how to apply such ideas to soloing over an alternating-thumb groove in C. But I really don't want to miss the ice cream window, so I'm going to have to skip that bit and get right into presenting today's Youtube lesson. 

Which is also about combining C major and C minor pentatonic licks over an alternating-thumb bass. You can find it here:

Travis Picking With Major And Minor Pentatonic Scales

Suffice to say, if you want to get my more in-depth take on this topic in particular and on fingerstyle blues technique and repertoire generally,  Fingerstyle Five registration awaits over at:

https://www.fretboardconfidential.com/

More soon,

David