P8 · swaps P1
The Thumb
Hendrix. Chord on the bottom, melody on top, one hand.
Part I gave you the skeleton — constraint, clock, exit — and seven practices that make a session hold its shape. Part II is the flesh on it. These seven are about sound and time rather than notes: touch, dynamics, the wet/dry rig as an instrument, playing outside on purpose, and the one practice every guitarist you admire did and you keep not doing. Same rules. Every practice still has a constraint, a clock, and an exit.
Each practice below names the Part I slot it can replace. Nothing is added to the session; things are swapped. The one exception is P14, which runs on Sunday — the day Part I gave you off. Ten minutes. You'll see why.
Hendrix. Chord on the bottom, melody on top, one hand.
Landau. One bend, held until it changes its mind.
Henderson. Seed a tritone away, then come home.
E and A triads up the top three strings. Harmony you can hear.
Same phrase at four volumes. The rig is the instrument.
Half-time feel. Play late. Play later.
Four bars, by ear, no tab. One lick a week from the benchmarks.
From the Hendrix long-licks pack, but as a practice rather than a catalogue. Thumb over the neck on the low E, the chord held, and the melody embellished on the D and G strings underneath the top notes. Rhythm and lead are one thing here. That's the whole Hendrix trick.
HOME: E7♯9 · thumb on E if you can, otherwise mute it EMBELLISH: D and G strings, 9th position e|--x-----------| e|-----------------------------| B|--8-----------| B|-----------------------9-----| G|--7-----------| G|-------------9h11------------| D|--6-----------| D|--9h11-----------------------| A|--7-----------| A|--7~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--| ← bass E rings the whole bar E|--(0)---------| E|-----------------------------| E G♯ D G B C♯ E F♯ G♯
Landau's signature isn't a lick. It's a note that lasts longer than seems reasonable, bent up, held, and shaped with vibrato that starts late. This is P2's ladder with the ladder removed — one bend, and the whole practice is what happens after the bend arrives.
THE NOTE · B string 15 (D) bent a whole step to E · then held 1 2 3 4 | 1 2 3 4 | B|--15b17~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--| D → E vibrato starts here, beat 3, not before
Henderson's move: play a phrase that's in, play it again a tritone away so it's out, then resolve back in. It's P6's displacement done to the whole phrase instead of one note — and it uses the Pack 01 seed, so the ear can follow it out and back.
IN (seed) OUT (seed, tritone up) HOME e|--12--15--12------|--6---9---6-------|-------------12--| B|--------------15--|--------------9---|--8------------| E G E D A♯ C♯ A♯ G♯ G E ↑ same shape, 6 frets down — every note outside ↑ G♯→G→E: half-step lands it
From the triads pack. Three inversions of E major and three of A major on the top three strings, walked up the neck over The Trip. Harmony with three notes — enough to sound like a chord, few enough to phrase like a lead. P4 taught modal colour; this teaches the chord itself.
E MAJOR · G B e A MAJOR · G B e 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd e|---0------7------12----| e|---0------5------9-----| B|---0------9------12----| B|---2------5------10----| G|---1------9------13----| G|---2------6------9-----| G♯BE EG♯B G♯BE AC♯E C♯EA EAC♯ E7 → A7 nearest move: E(9-9-7) → A(9-10-9) two notes move one fret
The wet/dry rig's actual purpose. The same phrase at four volumes, controlled from the guitar's knob and your right hand only — no pedal changes. Ppp through fff. The dry Badger tells you what your hand did; the wet Mesa tells you what the room heard.
| Level | Guitar vol | Right hand | Listen for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ppp | 3 | Flesh of the thumb, no pick | Does the phrase still exist? |
| p | 5 | Pick, light, near the neck | Clean. Room tail from the Mesa should be audible. |
| f | 8 | Pick, normal, over the pickup | Broadcast starts to grip. Dry Badger present. |
| fff | 10 | Dig in, near the bridge | Butter Machine barks. Does it still phrase, or just shout? |
Time feel. Play behind the beat on purpose — then further behind — over a half-time loop at 60. Most of what makes a blues player sound expensive is where the note lands relative to the click, not what the note is. This swaps into P3's slot once a week: the vamp, one card, but the card is always "late".
the click: 1 2 3 4 | on the beat: E G E D late: E G E D ← a hair after every click later: E G E D ← a triplet-eighth after the note is always the same. only where it lands changes.
The one you've been avoiding, and the one every player on your benchmark list did more than anything else. Four bars, by ear, no tab, no video. One lick a week from Landau, Henderson, or Hendrix. Sunday. Ten minutes. It goes into the deck as card 25+ — your own vocabulary, taken from theirs.
Still twenty-five minutes. Still four blocks. Every block now has an A option (Part I) and a B option (Part II), and the grid below alternates them so nothing is done more than twice in a week and nothing is skipped for more than a week.
| Block | Min | A (Part I) | B (Part II) |
|---|---|---|---|
| OPEN | 3 | P1 Seed Minute | P8 The Thumb |
| CORE | 12 | P3 Constrained Vamp / P4 Switch | P11 Triad Walk / P13 The Drag |
| STRETCH | 7 | P2 · P5 · P6 | P9 · P12 · P10 |
| CLOSE | 3 | P7 The Listen — always. No B option. This is the spine. | |
| Week | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 · P3 · P9 | P8 · P4 · P5 | P1 · P11 · P12 | P8 · P3 · P2 | P1 · P13 · P10 | ×2: P8 · P4 · P6 / P1 · P11 · P9 | P14 |
| 2 | New seed · P1 · P3 · P12 | P8 · P11 · P2 | P1 · P4 · P9 | P8 · P13 · P5 | P1 · P3 · P10 | ×2: P8 · P11 · P12 / P1 · P4 · P6 | P14 |
| 3 | New seed · P8 · P3 · P9 | P1 · P11 · P5 | P8 · P4 · P12 | P1 · P13 · P2 | P8 · P3 · P6 | ×2 · read all P7 sentences | P14 |
| 4 | New seed · P1 · P11 · P10 | P8 · P3 · P9 | P1 · P4 · P12 | P8 · P13 · P2 | P1 · P3 · P5 | The Statement II: 16 bars, no constraint, keep it | P14 → P10 on all four steals |
Cards 13–24. Shuffle into the Part I deck. These are the sound-and-time cards; the first twelve were the note cards. Cards 25 onward are yours — one per P7 sentence, one per P14 steal.
A chord must be ringing under every phrase. Bass note never stops.
One bend per four bars. Held. Vibrato no earlier than beat 3.
Every phrase is played twice: once in, once a tritone away, then resolved.
Beat 1 of every bar is a triad of the current chord. Top three strings.
Guitar volume at 3. Thumb only. The entire four minutes.
Every phrase starts clean and ends filthy, or the reverse. Knob only.
Nothing on the beat. Everything behind. If you're early, a bar of silence.
Only P14 licks and developments of them. Nothing of your own.
Wet Mesa muted. Badger alone. The phrase has to carry itself.
Dry Badger muted. You're playing the reverb. Leave room for it.
Drybel on, slow. Every phrase must ride the sweep — land on the top of it.
Half as many notes as you want. Count them. Halve it.
Suhr S. Thornicus low, Vibe Machine slow, Jan Ray. Amp on the edge. This one's allowed the Hendrix toys because the chord under the melody is what those pedals were built to hear.
Jan Ray → Broadcast → Butter Machine, DCX as the desk. Big BigSky. TimeLine dotted-eighth off for P13 — a delay hides late timing, and you need to hear exactly where you landed.
Clean, AC+ for edge. Outside notes and triads both need every pitch audible. No vibe, no fuzz — the harmony is the effect.
Full chain on, nothing switched during the practice. The rig is set once at f and never touched. All four volumes come from the guitar and the hand. That's the point.
Whatever gets closest to the record. Then, the second time through, your sound. The lick has to survive the change of clothes.
Parts I and II together are fourteen practices, twenty-four cards, and one protocol. That's a year of sessions before anything repeats in the same combination. Pack 05, when you want it, is still The Solo — but now it has P14's stolen licks and P7's sentences to build from, which is why Part II had to come first.