Call and Response

The blues is built on call and response, and the form itself is shaped by it. In a sung blues, the first line is a call, the second line repeats it, and the third answers. The guitar traditionally fills the gaps at the end of each line, which is why blues phrases are short and why the space between them is not empty.

This gives you a structure for soloing that is far more useful than any scale. Play a phrase in the first two bars. Leave two bars of space. Play something that answers it — related, not identical, maybe the same rhythm a little higher. Leave space again.

The discipline is in the rests. Two bars of silence is a long time when you are holding a guitar, and the urge to fill it is overwhelming. Resist it and your playing will immediately sound more confident, because confidence in music is mostly the willingness to stop.

A useful exercise: sing a phrase, then play it. You cannot sing sixteenth-note runs, so singing forces phrases that are short, rhythmic and memorable.

This track is a twelve-bar shuffle in C built around call and response, so the form is already leaving you the gaps.

Play strictly in the pattern: two bars on, two bars off, for a whole chorus. Then, without changing anything else, make your second phrase an answer to the first rather than a new idea — same rhythm, different notes, or the same notes an octave up.

The entire chorus should contain perhaps twelve notes. Count them if you do not believe it is enough.

A call-and-response shuffle in C. Two bars on, two bars off, no exceptions.