Learn and Master Blues Guitar

Learn And Master Blues Guitar Review

by Chris on February 7, 2010

Are you interested in becoming a blues guitarist but have no idea where to start? In this review, I’m going to take a look at the Learn and Master Blues Guitar Spotlight Series, a follow up to the highly popular and successful Learn and Master Guitar course by Legacy Systems. With this course, you will find all the blues guitar lessons and resources you need to learn blues guitar. Does it work? Read on the find out.

With Learn and Master Blues Guitar, you’ll receive a set of 6 DVDs, a Jam Along DVD & CD, 2 bonus interviews with blues guitar legends Jack Pearson and Johnny Hiland, and a downloadable instructional guide. You’ll also receive access to an online forum so you can ask questions and interact with other blues guitar learners. Instructor Steve Krenz was brought back to teach this Learn and Master Blues Guitar course. As a Nashville studio guitarist, Steve has quite a bit of experience teaching blues guitar. A good guitar instructor is probably the most important part of any guitar course, and Steve definitely fits the bill here. His easy to follow teaching style which makes each blues guitar lesson simple to pick up.

As I went through Learn and Master Blues Guitar course, I was very impressed by the quality of the materials. The course covers step-by-step, everything you need to learn blues guitar. Steve first demonstrates a particular topic in detail, and then you’ll have time to practice what he just taught you. As you go through each blues guitar lesson, you’ll find helpful on-screen graphics to aid the learning process. It’s also simple to hop around so you can easily jump to a specific topic or exercise you want to practice. The course starts off with the fundamentals, and you’ll learn the basic notes, chords and forms that make up the blues. Soon though, you’ll be playing fast shuffles, slow 12/8 blues, and “blues in every key”. By the end of the course you’ll have learned many advanced blues guitar techniques and will have the confidence to start exploring the blues guitar on your own.

One of my favorite parts of the Learn and Master Blues Guitar course are the JamPlay DVD and CD. The JamPlay materials enable you to practice your blues guitar playing skills along side a real band. These aren’t some boring guitar tracks either, but a real band with real blues guitar music, featuring the likes of Dino Pastin (keyboard player for Alabama), Chris Tyrrell (drummer for Tim McGraw) and Tony Marvelli. Each of the 22 included tracks highlights a different area of playing the blues. You’ll play blues songs in different keys, styles, and tempos at a varying range of difficulties. This is one of the best ways to practice your new found blues guitar skills and I personally found them to be very fun and enjoyable.

As an added bonus, Learn and Master Blues Guitar also includes interviews with two blues guitar legends, Jack Pearson and Johnny Hiland. In these exclusive interviews, you’ll discover their signature blue guitar techniques that made these two blues legends who they are. Jack covers topics like playing the slide guitar, alternate tunings and has some great advice for beginning blues players. In Johnny’s interview you’ll learn his blues playing approach, bending and other interesting blues techniques. The interviews are a blast and blues enthusiasts will find them to be a great addition to the product.

All in all, Learn and Master Blues Guitar is probably the best blues guitar course out there. It contains all the blues guitar lessons and instruction you need to become a successful blues guitarist. The Learn and Master series of products is well known for its high quality instruction and this course is no exception. The course can be purchased online for $99 and comes with a full 60 day money back guarantee. Support is exceptional, so you don’t have to worry about that either. If you are at all interested in trying to learn blues guitar, then you definitely need to give Learn and Master Blues Guitar a try.

Visit the Learn and Master Blues Guitar Website

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A Slide Guitar Introduction

by Chris on February 7, 2010

Blues songs and blues guitar are notable for developing certain popular styles of guitar including the innovative style of slide guitar. You won’t learn how to play slide guitar in your first blues guitar lesson but it is a style of playing that anyone interested in learning to play blues guitar should know about.

Also known as bottleneck guitar, blues guitarist Sylvester Weaver first recorded slide guitar in 1923 and it is in that decade that slide guitar became a popular facet of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Involving the use of a “slide” to apply constant pressure to the frets and produce an uninterrupted change in pitch, the slide guitar was first known as a “bottleneck guitar” because a sawed-off bottleneck was a popular item used as a slide in the 1920s. Today, bottlenecks slides are still in use but a variety of other materials including ceramic, stainless steel, brass and chrome are used in the manufacture of slides.

These slides are generally manufactured as tubes that fit over a finger on the blues guitarist’s non-dominant hand but some guitarists still use knives or bottlenecks as slides. Regardless of the slide you choose, it’s possible to play slide guitar on any type of acoustic or electric guitar – some blues guitarists are even experimenting with using the slide guitar technique with bass guitars. Although any guitar will do, resonator and steel guitars are especially suited to this style of blues.

If you get more involved in slide guitar and practice the technique frequently, it would be a good idea to have the strings of your guitar raised off the neck more than they are for non-slide guitar. This can be done using something called an “extension nut” but it is not necessary at a basic or experimental level. But, since you’re probably at the basic level or just trying it out to see how it plays, it’s more important for you to listen to some sample slide guitar, hear how it sounds and then experiment with replicating that sound.

Listening to blues songs like Eric Clapton’s “Layla” and Elmore James’s “Dust My Broom” will give you an idea of the unique sound of slide guitar and demonstrate what you are trying to replicate. Once you know how it should sound, begin experimenting with the slide and guitar of your choice. Don’t worry if what you’re doing doesn’t sound exactly like what Elmore James is doing. One of the hardest parts of learning to play slide guitar is learning to properly mute unwanted strings. But experiment for a few hours and you’ll get the hang of controlling which strings sound and which don’t.

Frankly, hours of experimenting is what playing slide guitar as a beginner is all about. It takes time to become comfortable using the slide and controlling the sound it produces and this comfort can’t be taught in a blues guitar lesson. That being said, the above information about history, technique and even the material of the slides should help you as you begin playing slide guitar. It’s a technique with a rich history stretching back to the 1920s and the early days of Mississippi Delta Blues and it is from this rich history that you can learn how to play slide guitar.

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Great Blues Guitar Legends

February 6, 2010

The blues as a genre is possessed of a deep and varied history with many artists contributing their own style to the genre and changing it through their work. Despite this varied history, a number of great blues guitarists stand out as either individuals who heavily influenced the genre or individuals who captured the public’s [...]

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A Quick History Of Blues Guitar

February 6, 2010

The guitar is inextricably linked to the development of blues music over the last 120 years. Since its beginning around 1890 and maturation 20 years later around 1910, the blues were characterized by powerful vocals accompanied by acoustic guitar. Guitar is the original accompaniment in blues and it dominated the music of the blues for [...]

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