Wade in the water

Here, you can find each phrase of the melody for Wade in the Water looped and slowed down, so you can get used to playing each phrase fluently.

This is the way you always want to approach new material. If you spend ten minutes on each section, by the end of the week the whole thing will be sounding fluent. Conversely, if you play through from start to finish a few times, your hands/ear/brain don’t have much of a chance to build fluency.

These phrases are all from A minor pentatonic. You can use them in any situation (and there are many!) where you can play A minor pentatonic. It is very, very useful to have a library of phrases you can play by heart, and these will form the start of your own library.

There are lots of ways you can adapt phrases that you know by heart later on in improvisations too.

Wade in the water motif 1-2

Here I have looped the chunks of the vocal melody and slowed them down for those who want to play lead to get to know the part. This gives you the chance to develop your transcribing ability and your playing in time. There’s one that is slower and one at original tempo. Try both.

If you want to develop your ability to play by ear, you can also try to work out the notes from listening repeatedly to the looped sections. The melodies can all be found inside position 1 of A minor pentatonic. The tab is there for reference, but to get the cool rhythm of the phrasing, refer to the audio.

Pro tip: don’t try both parts of each motif at once. Play one for all the repetitions of the loop, a few times. Then play the other. Then play them together.

Original tempo

Slower

Wade in the Water motif 3-4

Original tempo

Slower