Grade 8 Guitar

I'm doing it in October, because I was too late in putting in the form for "B" ;p But yeah, I'm doing 667, Sampa Samba and Fusion. It's going okay learning them except that 32 bar solo in Sampa Samba I find it difficult to just improvise with a decent phasing, I know the scales and whatever and I can improvise to different styles quite proficiently, but I always get a bit stuck on that one

The guitarist in my band did this in January but still hasn't got his result as he hasn't paid them yet?!

I did Sampa Samba as a warm up excercise in a bass lesson and it was quite fun

Cheesey as hell those rockschool songs!

Sampa Samba is fairly hard to make up a solo for, I learnt it, but ended up doing Bonzo (easy but not exciting), Whatever Happened to Jazz (weird but cool), and Wake Up JoJo (from the old syllabus, as a free choice piece - I would recommend it, it's awesome, but also by far the hardest).

For the Sampa Samba solo, on the first few chord cycles, arpeggiate, and play around with different voicings, and then spice it up a bit on the repeat, with some jazz lines, fast runs, 2-5-1s, etc. It's not easy though, I would recommend doing Wake Up JoJo, it's so much fun, and actually quite a good piece (unlike many of the others)

I know Wake Up JoJo, I was going through the old book It's quite a nice piece, I prefer Fusion to be honest, that's a cool one. For the Sampa Samba Solo, I wrote down the modes to use over the bars: ( (C Aeolian x3 G Whole Tone) x 3, D Dorian and C# Whole Tone), but I keep messing up because it relies on playing out of the box as well

The sweep picking I find difficult as well. I've got a PRS CE22 and it's high action, very good at expressiveness. I think the Quick Study is pretty easy as long as you can read music and improvise okay.

Sampa Samba is fairly hard to make up a solo for, I learnt it, but ended up doing Bonzo (easy but not exciting), Whatever Happened to Jazz (weird but cool), and Wake Up JoJo (from the old syllabus, as a free choice piece - I would recommend it, it's awesome, but also by far the hardest).

For the Sampa Samba solo, on the first few chord cycles, arpeggiate, and play around with different voicings, and then spice it up a bit on the repeat, with some jazz lines, fast runs, 2-5-1s, etc. It's not easy though, I would recommend doing Wake Up JoJo, it's so much fun, and actually quite a good piece (unlike many of the others)