Folks, I’m getting close. I'm not there yet, but something has finally shifted with the solo section. It's like I’ve been on a long C-curve, improving at a glacial pace, and then suddenly… it’s starting to sound like music.
I’m still under tempo, but even when I push it a bit, the crashes and freeze-ups are happening far less often.
What’s really encouraging is that I’ve started to build a small vocabulary—riffs, I suppose—that I can rely on for certain progressions. I’ve got a couple for F6–Fm6, one cheeky one for C6–F7, and a nice descending idea for Em7–A7. I move into syncopated blocked chords for both C6–E7–Am7–D7 and Gm7–C9, and I’ve got two riffs that work over Dm7–G7. For everything else, I’m mostly outlining the chord or using blocked chords, but even there, a few ideas are starting to show up.
This has been a bit of a lightbulb moment. The riffs aren’t just “nice ideas”; they're doing real work, reducing real cognitive load. Instead of trying to invent something for every single chord in real time, I can improvise a bit, then when I hit something like Dm7–G7, drop in a familiar riff to carry me through to the next bar.
Which makes me wonder if part of my problem has been trying to think too small.
In the video, I talk about wanting to feel mentally and technically prepared for each chord change. But the more I think about it, the more that feels like the wrong target, at least at tempo. There just isn’t enough time to consciously “prepare” every chord.
What seems to be happening instead is that I’m starting to group things. Not Dm7, then G7, then C6—but a single unit. Not eight individual chords, but a four-bar line. And those riffs help with that because they reduce the number of decisions I have to make in the moment. Less to think about, more to actually play.
I didn’t set out to do that, but I'm glad it's worked out this way. It feels like my brain is finally getting out of its own way a little bit.
I think this is how it’s supposed to work. Jonny talks about this in the blues courses and even teaches specific riffs for it. He includes a turn idea in After You’ve Gone, which I use, but the ones I’ve come up with tend to stretch across the full measure or more.
Here’s my latest update video. I sound a little negative in it, but that’s just me being self-deprecating. I say I’m “frustrated,” but I’m really not. And while I mention worrying about wrong notes, that’s nowhere near the concern it used to be.
Anyway, here’s the video. As in this post, I ramble a bit, but I do play more than I ramble.
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