Pro vid of my covers band doing Jump

[donnyboiler]

https://youtu.be/ncwLMmAGyqY

Enjoy!

[JimiJames]

Juno 60 heaven ! lol

[garbeaj]

Donny, excellent work! That was one of, if not the best cover I've ever heard of "Jump". Doesn't surprise me...

If you recall, we discussed the "Drop Dead Legs" riff some time ago and you were sharp enough to catch the real way to play it properly. I was the only person that I knew that actually played it right until you posted your TAB and I realized I wasn't alone!

I've posted the handwritten TAB that you shared in that discussion in many forums and all over discussions on social media since then.

This clip is proof that you know what the hell you are doing! Slainte!

[donnyboiler]

Thanks dude. Y'know, your positive comments almost got me thinking "maybe it's time to do the full blown VH tribute thing" and then almost immediately I got some negative fuck commenting on YouTube saying that the solos aren't 100% accurate (yeah, I have one note different because I physically can't make my fingers do it the EVH way).

Now I remember why I run a function band and not a VH tribute. Thankless profession. I once spoke to the guy who ran a busy VH tribute. They were inundated with work, but one of the reasons they stopped I think was too many guitarists standing in the audience with their arms folded and a face like a smacked arse.

Q. How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A. One to change it, and ten to say "ooh, I wouldn't have done it like that"

Anyway, I have my first gig with my Toto tribute tonight, wish me luck

[garbeaj]

You are gonna kill it man.

And for the record, I'm one of those guys that is sitting there with my arms folded and judging the VH tribute guitar players. I am acquainted with the guy that plays in the most successful Van Halen tribute act in the world, and he's a nice guy that puts on a great show...he gets the crowd going and he has the striped guitars and striped overalls and all that.

But the fact is he just can't play the music very well. Not even close. But the crowds that see them and the venues and companies that book them, including Live Nation, don't give a shit.

I encourage everyone to put the effort in to learn as much as they can from anyone that they are studying, including most obviously Eddie. There is A LOT to be gained by giving a shit and working really hard to actually, really and truly learn the stuff note-for-note.

My friend on this site wjamflan has taught me an immense amount of information about Eddie's style that I never grasped on my own. He and I can testify to how much we have grown as players by persevering and studying and learning from Eddie (and many other players) as note-for-note correctly as possible. It is impossible to overstate how important this process has been to our growth as players. I owe a tremendous debt to wjamflan for sharing what he has learned and proving to me, again, that there is tremendous value to really working hard to learn things as correctly and truly as possible.

That said, I think you are well beyond most players. You have put in the effort to learn and you have clearly dedicated yourself to learning.

So know this...I am one of the most critical listeners of Van Halen covers or demos of Van Halen playing. I analyze every note. I know when someone doesn't know what they are doing. You sir know what you are doing.

As far as the "Jump" solo in your clip...of course I can catch exactly where you are playing something that is slightly off from what is going on in the original recording. I can hear and see where there is a mistake or a deviation from a note-for-note recreation of the solo from the record.

But the reality is that the "Jump" solo was composed of many different passes that were edited and combined into the famous solo that we all know. It is not physically possible to play the "Jump" solo note-for-note correctly in one live take. The note choices you made sounded great to me and the overall solo was excellent...about as well as anyone could achieve given the impossibility of playing the solo from the record perfectly note-for-note.

Good on ya! You care about working hard, playing in time, being in tune and delivering a quality performance. Fuck anybody else that says otherwise because they don't know shit.

[donnyboiler]

Thanks, it means a lot. It's always a work in progress (isn't music always?) but this is basically the closest I can get it right now and be absolutely sure I'll pull it off every gig. I'm still working on doing the first fast pentatonic lick right - it's more or less the same as the Panama lick that was discussed here recently I think. Something about that particular sequence of pulloffs that ties my fingers in knots.

[garbeaj]

Thanks, it means a lot. It's always a work in progress (isn't music always?) but this is basically the closest I can get it right now and be absolutely sure I'll pull it off every gig. I'm still working on doing the first fast pentatonic lick right - it's more or less the same as the Panama lick that was discussed here recently I think. Something about that particular sequence of pulloffs that ties my fingers in knots.

You are correct! That lick is related to the Eric Clapton lick from "Sitting On Top Of The World" that I discussed here:

[rdodson]

This gets into a whole other area which for serious musicians is a big deal - and that is the precision of studying the masters. In piano, not just the note choices but the fingerings to get to the note choices are important and practiced over and over and over.

With the advent of rockabilly and bebop, improvisation became an end unto itself. And that, for what it is, is an important end. But music as a language actually changes your brain.

I realize Ed is an improvisor. But many of his "improvisations" post WACF are actually composed pieces.

[garbeaj]

This gets into a whole other area which for serious musicians is a big deal - and that is the precision of studying the masters. In piano, not just the note choices but the fingerings to get to the note choices are important and practiced over and over and over.

With the advent of rockabilly and bebop, improvisation became an end unto itself. And that, for what it is, is an important end. But music as a language actually changes your brain.

I realize Ed is an improvisor. But many of his "improvisations" post WACF are actually composed pieces.

Ron, I would go so far as to say that Ed was never an improvisor, especially in the Jazz sense, not even in the early days. He's just a rock player that played the same stock licks in the same songs night after night. Sure, mistakes happened sometimes and he might have had to "improvise" his way out of it sometimes, but no, he never improvised the way that Frank Zappa or Ornette Colman did. Eddie was not a jazz player, just a classic rock blues player that had a bag of licks, some were his own, some borrowed from others like Clapton, but he almost always stuck to the same ideas once a song was recorded and completed as an album statement. He then tried to execute the solos and the songs in the same way live every time, with very, very few exceptions that I can think of.

Even when you listen to early live versions of say "I'm The One"/"Show Your Love" where he throws in the "Ice Cream Man" lick...it seems like an improvisation because it is so drastically different from the version we all know from the Van Halen LP. In fact, that song was where the "Ice Cream Man" lick was originally played. If anything, he was just playing the "I'm The One" solo the way he used to play it before they made the final album version.

I'm passionate about disabusing people of the notion that Eddie Van Halen's playing was improvised. I think it somehow got into people's heads that Eddie completely made up everything he did on the spot every time with no antecedents like some free-jazz improvisational genius. That's a goal for all musicians, and it is probably even Eddie himself wishes that he could attain. But the reality is that Van Halen music is not free-jazz.

Once people realize this and they see where Eddie got his licks from (mostly Eric Clapton as wjamflan has correctly pointed out) and that he is playing from a stock bag of licks just like every other classic rock and blues player, then learning his music becomes more POSSIBLE and not IMPOSSIBLE. So many people think to themselves "I'll never be able to play Eddie's licks. They are all from his head and improvised and his hands are special and different than mine. I'll never be able to figure out his licks, so why even try?"

Which does a disservice to themselves and it prevents them from truly learning the great parts of Eddie's playing. There is so much more than right hand tapped triplets and squealing harmonics with a Floyd Rose. It's the "hard" parts that are so worth learning. When you really look at the "hard" parts, they aren't really that hard after you learn how he did it.

It's just my opinion that there's no reason that anyone has to give up learning from Eddie or any other player because they think it is all improvised free-jazz...it's just classic blues-rock, pure and simple!

And to bring it back around to Donny's thread, Donny is a guy that sees the value of learning the not so obvious stuff and not giving up because it is "hard". And I always applaud players like him. The learning never stops!

[donnyboiler]

Vid was very helpful, thanks for posting. Grabbing a guitar now to work on this. I had the repeated note on the B string missing all along! Maybe now I will nail it

[garbeaj]

Vid was very helpful, thanks for posting. Grabbing a guitar now to work on this. I had the repeated note on the B string missing all along! Maybe now I will nail it

That lick is a massive eye opener. And I can take ZERO credit for figuring it out. It is all thanks to my friend Bill (wjamflan) that turned me on to this lick and how to properly play the solos that come from it.

Seriously, because of Bill's hard work and patience with explaining these Clapton licks and how they fit specifically into Eddie's greatest solos and indeed into his entire style, I've grown by leaps and bounds as a player.

Bill was the guy that broke it all down...all the way down to the absolutely essential specific right hand picking directions.

Say it with me...wjamflan is the MAN!