The Friendly 12bar Blues Guitar Forum

Well as I mentioned last week in my "Another First For Me" topic I finally made the jump after much pushing from my Dad to go along to the open mic night in his local pub, as arranged we had another practice session this week too so we spent over 3 hours practicing our songs and working out a mini set of 4 songs to do on Wednesday.
I still regret not taking the camera last week being my first live performance and all but we took it this week.
As an irony last week the turnout was quite low so I didn't have to worry about messing up in front of too many people, but there were lots more this week which was probably good, if the size of the audience I play to doubles every week I'll be playing in 20,000 seater stadiums by Christmas
I hope you enjoy watching these because I really had a good time doing it and has left me feeling the happiest I have been in a long time.
Our opening song was Deep Purple - When A Blind Man Cries. We picked this song because it's a nice slow bluesy one and easy to settle the nerves.
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The next video is two songs with gaps for tuning and adjustment of settings in between, I would have edited the videos down a bit but my Dad was in charge of the upload.
Our second song was Gary Moore - All Your Love. The first Gary Moore song I learnt to play and always fun.
Our third song was Fleetwood Mac - Need Your Love So Bad. Just one of those great songs and I told my Dad that a Peter Green song has to be included in any set we do, also I like the chance to show off my Out Of Phase pickups.
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We finished off with my arrangement to a backing track of The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I really enjoy playing this one, we did it last week too and I think it probably went better than this version. The audience was at it's peak during this song and as I was stood behind the speakers I was having a lot of trouble hearing myself play during the final solo, a monitor is probably what's needed but there isn't one.
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Thanks for watching if you made it this far, I could have carried on playing another half a dozen songs but there were people waiting to do their bit.
So until the next adventure.....

What ever you do, don't stop now. You're diggin' it, huh? Next step is gettin' into a band.


I liked your Gary Moore - All Your Love clip and I'm not a Gary Moore fan...nor do I dislike him. I just never really followed his solo career after Thin Lizzy. For another version of that tune check out John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton-The Beano album.

Thanks Deacon, If I searched hard enough I could probably find a band that wanted to play the kind of music that I would want to play but I don't know many other musicians never mind ones that are into the blues.
Yes I know the Bluesbreakers version too and have a backing track for it, I just prefer Gary Moore's rocking sound to play along with. I strongly suggest you look into Gary Moore like his Blues For Greeny album, there is clips on YouTube where he played most of the album in a concert and it's just wonderful.

Very nice to see (and hear) Mike.

Given your skill at the "Greeny" sound you're right to have at least one Fleetwood Mac in the set-list and "Need your Love So Bad" is a very good choice and works very well.

I was really impressed with the way you nailed such a great tone for the opening of "When my Guitar Gently Weeps". And you really gave the song a great bluesy edge. Sympathies to your plight of not being able to hear yourself at the end, particularly when there's a good deal of bending of notes to do.

Great to know you're getting so much out of the experience too!

That was great - the guitar playing stands out! It's time or a real band and bigger audience now...
The vocals on While my guitar are also great - similar voice as George!

Mike, I'll definitely check out some more GM.

Also, I agree that your version of WMGGW is outstanding and the vocals were great, also.

Well done! Good playing!

A couple of questions:

1. What do you use for drums on your backing track?

2. What PA-system do you use?

3. Do you play the electric guitar through a computer plug-in or do you have a guitar amp?

I'm considering some songs with backingtracks since I don't play in a band due to family reasons.

I have Cubase, Superior drummer 2.0 and some VSTi:s suitable for making backing tracks. I have recently bought the Bose L1 Compact form my performances with acoustic guitar and vocals, but want to play some electric guitar too.

/Jokron

Thank you for all the comments guys, it makes my day to see some nice words about my playing.
Jokron: 1. I search for backing tracks online for most of the song, there are some great sites with lots of free tracks, a good place to start is just to Google the song.
2. The PA is the pubs system, a couple of Marshall speakers and a mixing desk mostly used for karaoke/disco's but works ok for the open mic too.
3. My guitar is plugged into a 10w Squier amp which is then plugged in to the microphone socket of my laptop, I use the amp to boost the signal into the computer because it is too weak otherwise and you lose most of you tone. Then on the laptop I use Guitar Rig 4 with a selection of presets I created for the various sounds I want to achieve. I'd love to have a great amp but money wont allow it plus the benefits of using the software is I can go from a Marshall full stack amp to a Fender Deluxe Reverb to a Peavey Classic 30 sound with the click of a button with infinite combinations of effects and stomps.

Nice playing and great tone! I thoroughly enjoyed that.

Thanks bluesfreek, glad you enjoyed it, I sure enjoyed playing them.

Great playing. Keep up the good work.
I have always loved "All Your Lovin'"... check out Otis Rush's version (any of them), and SRV's version from "In the Beginning".