There are a lot of musical styles out there…. a LOT (check out this wikipedia article if you don’t believe me.)
While that’s cool and all, you’ve probably never heard of most of them, and you probably never will. And that’s totally cool. You’re here because you want to play the blues. And if you’re reading the stuff on this blog in general, you’re pretty new to the guitar and still have a long way to go.
So you might wonder why things like “The Most Popular Strum In The World” matter to you. After all, it doesn’t sound very “bluesy.” [click to continue…]
Just about every beginning guitarist struggles with changing chords faster.
While I don’t want to imply that we’re going to cheat our way through this roadblock… we kind of are with this video. [click to continue…]
One thing beginners often have a hard time with is creating a smooth transition from one string to another. This video will show you how to make that transition so there aren’t “gaps” of silence between your notes. It might not seem like a big deal, but it makes an enormous difference in the sound. [click to continue…]
Now that we have the 2nd group of licks, and the full versions of the chords, we can put that together into an even cooler tune than “The Sitting Easy Blues.” [click to continue…]
This one is a little tougher, but your hands and fingers ought to be in better shape now from all that we’ve done.
I remember reading something from a famous bicycle racer once that basically said “Going as hard as you can always hurts the same. Over time, you go faster, but it never gets any easier.”
That’s also very applicable to guitar playing. [click to continue…]
Here’s another lick from the “group 2” series taken out of my Beginning Blues Guitar course. This one is important because it will teach you how to play the open E minor blues sound. This one scale is responsible for literally hundreds, if not thousands, of your favorite blues songs and licks…. [click to continue…]
If you ever go to an open jam session, or even just get together with some friends once in a while, the time will come when everyone sits around looking at each other….
“What do you want to play?”
“I dunno what do you want to play?”
“Do you know, (insert song here)?”
“No, how about ….”
And so it continues. [click to continue…]
A common complaint that I hear from a lot of beginning students is that they’ve been struggling to turn their chords and licks into music.
Most of the time this seems to come from the fact that they don’t understand how to keep time with their right arm and get the whole counting thing out of the way.
So in this short video, I’ll show you how to turn simple quarter notes and eighth notes into automatic strum patterns that take no thought from you. [click to continue…]
There are 2 things you really just HAVE to learn how to do… read TAB and read chord diagrams. Without those 2 skills, you’re just toast.
We’ve talked about TAB, let’s get into reading chord diagrams… they’re easy too. [click to continue…]
Moving on… not much to say about this one. It’s a little longer and a little harder but that’s good for you. [click to continue…]
