Blues Licks – Round 2 #1

by Griff

Let’s dig into a cool lick with a double-stop, 2 notes played at the same time. This one should be easy, but it’s a great sound. [click to continue…]

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The “Sitting Easy Blues”

by Griff

I’ve really been looking forward to this one. Here we’re going to put it all together into a fun little “playing on the porch” style tune.

Grab your guitar, and watch the first video. This is an introduction and we’ll play through it really slowly. [click to continue…]

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First Chords

by Griff

One of the key elements of blues is something called “call and response.” This comes from the origins of the blues back in slavery days where one person would call out, and the rest of the group on the work line would respond. From what I’ve read, this was actually used as a way for the slaves, who were typically shackled together, to keep in a rhythm and not make mistakes or fall… a potentially fatal error!

A lot of times in blues music, the call is in the form of a chord. A chord is simply anytime you play more than one note at a time. There’s a lot of theoretical mumbo jumbo we can get into about chords at a later time, but for now that’s what they are. [click to continue…]

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First Licks #4

by Griff

This next lick is actually the last one in this series. From here we’re going to move on to some simple chords and then putting it all together into a cool little “Playing On The Porch” style blues tune. [click to continue…]

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First licks #3

by Griff

Well not much to say about this one, it’s more of the same. But I got a question via email the other day that was sort of a “where are we going with this stuff?” email. So here’s what this is all about in a nutshell: [click to continue…]

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First Licks – Part 2

by Griff

So hopefully you’ve had a chance to work through the first lick I showed you. If you missed it, it’s here.

This lick is similar in style and difficulty. The whole idea here is to accomplish 2 important tasks:

  1. Practice and get your hands on your guitar for at least 15-20 minutes per day. That’s all it takes, but much less than that and you won’t see the kind of improvement you are probably looking for.
  2. Improve your TAB reading skills. Not that TAB is hard, it’s really easy, but the more “second nature” we can make it, the easier it will be for you to learn more complex things later. If you don’t try to read and learn new things, your TAB reading doesn’t improve.
  3. (I know I said 2.. but I was wrong) Increase your “vocabulary” of things you can “say” on your guitar. These licks aren’t just for practice, they can be put to very good use and I’ll show you that as soon as you get them under your fingers.

So here’s the video for the 2nd lick in this series. [click to continue…]

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First licks #1

by Griff

Now that we have learned how to read TAB it’s time to start learning some blues licks.
This first one is fairly easy but has a good blues sound. [click to continue…]

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Getting Started

by Griff

Alright… here we go. In this lesson we’ll discuss the VERY basics.

  • How to hold your guitar
  • How to hold the pick
  • How to play open strings
  • How to play fretted notes
  • How to read TAB
  • You’ll have a simple piece of music to start practicing on. [click to continue…]

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