Article by Jim Bruce
I submitted the following phrase into Google - blues guitar lessons for my own town - and came up with a couple of million hits. It's true that it's the obvious opening shot to attempt to find a local blues guitar teacher who can give lessons direct, but there are always hard choices to be made. You're never quite sure how good the teacher may be. On the other side of the coin, if he is (or was) the best in his profession, he may be really expensive - I'll leave you to guess what a big rate will do to your pocket.
More and more people are purchasing blues guitar lessons from the web (even though they might be looking for blues guitar lessons locally ) and of course this can bring other problems, not least the turth that there are many lesson packages to choose from.
The 'Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Course' is taking the guitar lessons world by storm and is rapidly becoming the standard to reach for acoustic blues tuition. The instructor is a working blues man, still playing the blues guitar in the cafes and on the streets of France. The tuition videos feature the old blues men, like Big Bill Broonzy, Lightnin' Hopkins, Robert Johnson and Blind Blake, amongst others. The range of in style and skill level is very impressive. Read the independent review that follows to see if this way of teaching may be right for you - it's right for countless others, pros and amateurs alike.
The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Course comprises a series of effective video lessons with all guitar tabs, which will show you how to play finger style acoustic blues, ragtime and bottleneck guitar, in the style of the classic blues legends like Blind Blake, Big Bill Broonzy, and Robert Johnson.
Each lessons video in the pack shows how to play blues guitar by concentrating on a complete song in a particular style, presenting it section by section, then showing how to put those parts together.
Instructor and Course Author
Course instructor is a well respected and established guitarist in the acoustic blues & ragtime styles, having released several albums up to press. He also spends a fair amount of time playing this style of guitar music on the streets and cafes of Europe, and so has years of practice in teaching the blues. Jim gives live classes mostly in Europe, where he lives, but is constantly on the lookout for opportunties to spread his craft - watch out for blues guitar lessons in your town in the future!
He shares his experience in the course - for example, in the video lesson for 'Key To The Highway', he presents the 'regular' & 'street' versions of this tune, with the 'street' version being slanted towards performing live. This is a wonderful way to approach learning the blues on guitar.
Let's Open The Box
The course features 36 high quality WMV or MOV video files on data-disk, along with PDF files of the full tablature to print out. Each video is a complete detailed lesson on learning one particular blues or ragtime song, for example 'Key To The Highway' (Big Bill Broonzy), or 'Crossroads' (Robert Johnson).
The data-disk format is employed so that over 11 hours of teaching material can be burned onto one. Simply put the disk in your disk drive, click on a song title and watch it like an ordinary video.Also, immediately after payment, an instant download link is provided, so that you can access some or all while waiting for the mail man to deliver your disk.
Course Description - What's in the 'Acoustic Blues Guitar Lessons Course'?
The individual video starts with Jim playing a whole song, at full tempo. This is great to see, but it can seem a little daunting, as you know you'll be learning to play the same thing! Then the lesson itself begins, as Jim splits the song right down into little, manageable parts that you can work on in a practice session. Additionally, he slows his hand movements right down, which makes it quite easy to follow the flow.
In the appropriate sections of the video, the tablature or chord/fingering charts are shown on the screen, making it easy to follow.One aspect that can be tricky when you're starting to play blues guitar, is coordinating the picking action of your right hand, with changing chords and fretting notes with your left. In each of the lesson videos, we see close ups of both the right hand picking technique and the left hand chord positions, so you can see more easily what's happening.
Each of the different song sections are then put together, so you can quickly advance towards playing more complete parts of the song.In some of the videos (for example Walkin' Blues), Jim also teaches how to play slide or bottleneck guitar, which is the foundation of one of an important classic 'blues' sound. The video parts for this are really clear, with nice closeups, and Jim offers some useful advice on how to best employ the bottleneck, for example, on how best to dampen the unwanted noise with your left hand, which is a vital skill to learn if you want to get the cleanest bottleneck guitar sound.
The bottleneck guitar lessons use an alternative guitar tuning, and Jim explains clearly how to change the tuning of each string, before starting the tuition. Like the other video lessons, the tablature is displayed in the bottom third of the screen, showing where to use the bottleneck.
There are handy tips on singing the verses while playing. Jim takes individual lines from the verses, and shows how the words fit with the music. This is very useful advice, as it's one matter to be able to play the guitar part on its own, and something else entirely to be able to play and sing at the same time. Just reading the lyrics isn't usually sufficient to figure out exactly when to start singing, so having this demonstrated clearly like this is a great help.
Support
Support for the lessons is by email, and I've always found Jim to be very responsive and quick to get back to me when I've had a question.
'The Acoustic Blues Course' - Our Verdict
I found the course to be a very effective and practical way to learn to play blues. I liked the way in which every lesson video is completely dedicated to learning one particular song, so that after working through all of the lessons, you end up with a whole range of classics for your song list, as well as a great variety of picking styles and licks that you can incorporate into some of your other songs. Blues guitar lessons should give you the skills to perform complete songs, and this course does precisely that.
To learn to play songs in this style of guitar playing, I think it's vital to understand how the tune should sound when performed, before learning each section, and this is what you get with these lessons, with Jim playing the song at the beginning, so you can see and hear what you need to progress towards. I thought that the way the tune was divided into small parts, and played in slow motion, made it easy to work on sections of the tune in a single practice session, before putting the sections together.
There are plenty of close up shots of both hands on the videos, which will help you perfect each section. I found the close up shots of the left hand really useful, as just seeing the tab or chord diagrams for a section doesn't really give enough info for learning more complicated parts of a song. Examining the fretting hand closeup clip over a few times really helped me here.Additionally, I enjoyed watching the 'street' version of Key To The Highway, where Jim shares his experience of playing the tune live. It's great to learn how to play the 'regular' version, but very informative to see how to tweak this into the 'street' version to give your picking some more impact when playing for an audience.
If you have knowledge of basic chords, and you're looking to get into learning some finger style/finger picking blues and bottleneck acoustic guitar, then I can definitely recommend the course. You will learn how to play blues songs which can't help but develop your skills as a guitar player, and these can also be very impressive sounding songs to be able to play to people when someone asks you to play them a tune. I'm also impressed with the instant download feature, giving instant access while waiting for disk delivery by mail.
About the Author
Jim Bruce's acoustic blues guitar lessons in Chicago are fast becoming the standard to reach for acoustic blues guitar picking.
Main website: http://www.play-blues-guitar.eu/Youtube Video - blues guitar lessons in Chicago