Learn Electric Guitar

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Hey everyone

I’ve decided it’s time I got around to writing up a privacy policy for this blog, so here goes:

I take your privacy seriously, and am writing this to explain in plain english what information is collected on the site, and how it is used.

I have installed web analytic software (Google Analytics) on this site.  If you have javascript activated, then the analytic software will track details such as your operating system, a rough idea of your geographic location, the web browser you use, the pages you visit, the time you spent on each page, the pages that referred you to this site, and any search queries you used to get here.  This information is kept by Google on a remote server, which I access from home using a web browser.

This information is used to provide a picture of where visitors are coming from, what they are searching for, and what sort of hardware and software they are using.  This will then be used to optimise the site for future visitors.

No information is collected by the web analytic software that could be used to personally identify you.

If you wish to make a comment on any of the posts on this site, you will be asked to enter in your email address.  I might use this to reply to your comment, if I feel it is appropriate to reply via email.  To date I’ve never done this, but who knows, some day I might.  I’ll never use it for anything else.

This website contains affiliate links to guitar-related products and services.  If you make a purchase through an affiliate link, the vendor or payment processor may display your name, your country, state or province, or the method of payment that you used.  I don’t use this information for anything at all.

This privacy policy may change, as different activities, features or plugins on the site may change what information is collected and how it is used.  If this privacy policy is changed, notification will included in a blog post, with a link to the new privacy policy.

No information will be sold, nor used for unsolicited communication.

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2010 is just around the corner guys!  And if you’ve been meaning to step up your guitar playing, the new year is a great opportunity to spur yourself to do something about it.  Here are a few ideas you can include in your New Year’s Resolutions:

Practice More

It might seem obvious, but it’s still a great resolution to be making.  If you’ve always been meaning to practice more, then the new year is a great time to start.  Write yourself out a practice schedule, including what you’re going to practice and when you’re going to do it.  Don’t forget warm-ups and stretches!

Learn to play guitar

This one is for those of you who have been wanting to start learning electric guitar but have never quite gotten around to doing anything about it.  If this is you, make a decision right now that the first thing you’ll do in the new year is get your first guitar and book in lessons with a guitar teacher, or download some guitar instruction software.

Start a band

This one is for those of you who have been playing for a while, but have been wondering if there’s more to guitar than just playing in your bedroom.  Make an effort to get out there and jam with other musicians!  Playing along with drummers, bass players, keyboardists, sax players and singers is completely different to practicing at home alone, and will stretch your playing like nothing else.

Pick some songs to learn

This one is easy.  Just list some songs you wanna learn in 2010, and then do it.  The trick here is to pick songs you really love, and are difficult enough to stretch your playing, but not so difficult that you might give up in frustration before you have learnt it.

Train your ear

Guitar is not just about the hands.  The ear and the brain are equally crucial to the task.  If you’ve been working a lot on technique, the new year might be a great time to try something else and give your ear a workout.  Consider some ear training software or just pick up your guitar and try to play along to songs you don’t know, working it out as you go.

Discover some new techniques

2010 could be a great year to try some alternate picking, sweep picking, tapping licks, hybrid picking, legato arpeggios or anything else you’ve been meaning to turn your mind to.

Expand your influences

Sometimes it just takes a few new CDs to really shake your electric guitar playing up.  2010 might be time for you to finally start checking out some 70s funk, 80s hair metal, 60s UK blues or 90s desert rock.. anything really, so long as you’re not listening to it already!  If you’re stuck in a rut, listening to something from completely out of left field can spur you to do something radically different with your playing.

These are just some ideas – the main thing is to make a very specific, ambitious and realistic course of action, and then to follow through with it.  Have a great 2010 everyone, and those of you celebrating New Year’s Eve tomorrow night I hope you have an awesome evening!

Technorati Tags: Guitar Instruction, guitar lessons, learning electric guitar, new year's resolutions

“I wish they’d had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would’ve been straightened out.” – Jimi Hendrix

“After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Frederick Chopin

“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.” – Charlie Parker

“Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear.” – Billy F. Gibbons

“The only way you can get good, unless you’re a genius, is to copy. That’s the best thing. Just steal.” – Ritchie Blackmore

“It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.” – Johannes Sebastian Bach

“A painter paints pictures on canvas.  But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” – Leopold Stokowski

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.” – Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.”  – Oscar Wilde

“Let’s be realistic about this, the guitar can be the most blasphemous device on the face of the earth. That’s why I like it…The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar: now that’s my idea of a good time.” – Frank Zappa

“I just go where the guitar takes me. ” – Angus Young

“When I tried to play something and screwed up, I’d hear some other note that would come into play. Then I started trying different things to find the beauty in it. ” – Dimebag Darrell

“… Lightnin’ Hopkins taught us, “the rubber on a wheel is faster than the rubber on a heel” and Muddy Waters taught us “you don’t have to be the best one; just be a good ‘un” .. that just about says it all, always strive to be a good ‘un…” – Billy F. Gibbons

“I don’t know anything about music, In my line you don’t have to.” - Elvis Presley

“Playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It’s not the thing in itself; it’s preparatory to the activity” – Barney Kessel

“Wes Montgomery played impossible things on the guitar because it was never pointed out to him that they were impossible. ” – Ronnie Scott

“Whenever society gets too stifling and the rules get too complex, there’s some sort of musical explosion” – Slash

“…regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going …” – Wes Montgomery

“… I think people overemphasize the importance of gear in their search for tone. Your sound comes from how you pick and dampen the strings, and from your attack as much as anything…” – Eric Johnson

|”… I don’t want you to play me a riff that’s going to impress Joe Satriani; give me a riff that makes a kid want to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play …” – Ozzy Osbourne

“… guitarists shouldn’t get too riled up about all of the great players that were left off of ‘Rolling Stone Magazines’ list of the Greatest Guitar Players of all Time’ … Rolling Stone is published for people who read the magazine because they don’t know what to wear …” – Joe Satriani

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” – Hunter S. Thompson

“Each guitar has its own character and personality, which can be magnified once the player engages in beatin’ it up” – Billy F. Gibbons

“… that’s one of the cool things about going to local bars: seeing what people are doing and jamming with them. I’m a huge advocate of jamming with others; you learn a lot. So I love to go and do that – even if people wipe the stage up with you..” – Slash

“Most beginners want to learn lead because they think it’s cool .. consequently, they never really develop good rhythm skills .. since most of a rock guitarists time is spent playing rhythm, it’s important to learn to do it well .. learning lead should come after you can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head” – Eddie Van Halen

“The effects of good music are not just because it’s new; on the contrary music strikes us more the more familiar we are with it.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“… I too once belived in the heavier gauge string as a superior tone source. However, thanks to the graciousness of B.B. King I learned that a lighter-gauge string offers superior playing comfort … try it, you may like it …” – Billy F. Gibbons

“…some musicians, man, you hear the note almost before they hit it. Jimi, Coltrane and Charlie Parker were like that… ” – Carlos Santana

“If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards.” – Joe Pass

“Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.” - Igor Stravinsky

“An intellectual is someone who can listen to the “William Tell Overture” without thinking of the Lone Ranger.” – John Chesson

“Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.” – Keith Richards

“Rock & roll is not so much a question of electric guitars as it is striped pants” – David Lee Roth

“Everything I wrote about wasn’t about me, but about the people listening.” – Chuck Berry

“You can’t stop rock-n-roll!” – Dee Snider

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So, you wanna be a rock star, but you’re not sure your name would look the part in the liner notes?  The  stage name is your friend, my friend. Some guitarists have ended up with a stage name from a nickname, others have deliberately crafted a radically new identity for themselves.  Here are a few of the coolest stage names in electric guitar:

Slash – Slash was born in England as Saul Hudson, but moved to the United States as a young child.  He was given the nickname “Slash” by a family friend well before he joined the band Guns N Roses.

Tracii Guns – Tracii Guns was born as Tracy Ulrich. As the founder of both LA Guns and Guns N Roses, he gave his adoptive stage name to both bands.

Mick Mars – The Motley Crue guitarist was born BAD as Bob Alan Deal, and says that he took the stage name Mick Mars because he always felt like he was some sort of outsider or alien who didn’t quite belong.  Those who know him say the name suits him very well.

Jimi Hendrix – Regularly cited as the world best proponent of the electric gutiar, Johnny Allen Hendrix had his name changed by his father to James Marshall Hendrix, he takes the stage name Jimmy James and then becomes Jimi on the advice of Chas Chandler, his new manager.

B.B. King – Born as Riley King, he became known as the “Beale Street Blues Boy” – through the years this becomes shortened to B.B.

T-Bone Walker – Aaron Thibeaux Walker earned the name “T-Bone” as childhood nickname taken from his middle name.

Buckethead – Brian Patrick Carroll decided to wear a KFC bucket and a white mask on his head, and perform as “buckethead”.  These days he just wears a plain white bucket.

K.K. Downing – Judas Priest guitarist Kenneth Downing Jr. earned the far catchier stage name “K.K.” in Denmark, where he met a girl who couldn’t pronounce his real first name.

C. C. DeVille – Poison guitarist Bruce Anthony Johannesson took the name C.C. DeVille from a car, the Cadillac Coupe de Ville.

Joan Jett – Joan Marie Larkin joined The Runaways and gave herself the alliterative surname to end all alliterative surnames.

Vinnie Vincent – Vincent John Cusano replaced Ace Frehley in Kiss, and was promptly instructed that his new name was now Vinnie Vincent.  He obviously liked it enough to name his next band the Vinnie Vincent Invasion.

Ace Frehley – Paul Daniel Frehley became Ace when he joined Kiss, though many of us really think of him as “the spaceman”.

Paul Stanley – Born as Stanley Harvey Eisen, he sought something catchier and with fewer syllables.

Euroboy – Knut Schreiner is probably not such an undistinctive or difficult-to-remember name.  But with bandmates such as Hank Von Helvete and Pol Pot Pamparius, he needed something a little extra to cut through as the lead guitarist in Turbonegro

Leadbelly – Huddie William Ledbetter is best known as “Leadbelly”, although he preferred it as “Lead Belly”

Nick Royale – Nicke Andersson took the name Nick Royale after quitting as the drummer for Death N Roll band Entombed to become the singer/guitarist for scandinavian hard rock legends The Hellacopters.

Dimebag Darrell – Darrell Lance Abbott was originally known as Diamond Darrell in the early incarnations of Pantera, but took the name “dimebag” when they departed from their glam metal roots.  Dimebag is reputedly a reference to the snaplock bags used by shopkeepers to keep coins in to deposit at the bank – also commonly used in the sale of illegal drugs.

Ross The Boss – Australian-born Ross Friedman originally earned his nickname “Ross the Boss” as a child playing baseball in New York City, but too the name with him in punk pioneers The Dictators and seminal heavy metal band Manowar.

Prince – Believe it or not, but Prince Rogers Nelson was actually born as Prince Rogers Nelson.  But he
gets cited here for deciding that Prince was just not showbiz enough, and taking a symbol as his name, causing him to be referred to everywhere as “the artist formerly known as Prince”

Cobalt Stargazer – Geoff Bird probably could have rocked out as Geoff Bird in almost any band, but when joining the Love Reaction with Mr. Zodiac Mindwarp he needed something a little more outlandish.  His choice of stage name was nearly trumped by a later Love Reaction guitarist, Trash D Garbage.

Blackie Lawless – Steven Edward Duren was in a New York street gang with Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley when he grew up.  By the time he had become famous as the singer/bass guitarist and later singer/guitarist for WASP he was known the the world as Blackie.

Johnny Thunders – John Anthony Genzales Jr. took the name Johnny Thunders when he joined the New York Dolls and kept it ’til the end of his days.

Zakk Wylde – Jeff Wielandt threw caution to the wind when he joined John Michael “Ozzy” Osborne’s band.. and grew and enormous beard and enormous muscles shortly after.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Yngwie Malmsteen – The swedish shredder decided that Lars Johann Yngwie Lannerback was way too hard to pronounce or remember, so he chose the much easier.. Yngwie Malmsteen?

Technorati Tags: electric guitar, famous guitarists, stage names

We left off from our last part in the history of the electric guitar with europeans rocking it out to the lute as their fretted instrument of choice, while the four string chartar had just arrived in spain from central asia.  So how come we all ended up wailing on electric guitars, and not on electric lutes?

The lute is a pretty nifty sounding gadget.  Have a listen to it here:

But hang on.. we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.  How did this four string instrument from somewhere near Persia become a Strat and a Les Paul?  Well the first thing the spanish did when they got ahold of the chitarra was to add four more strings to it.  This 8 string instrument had four “courses” of two strings each, with each course of two strings tuned either in unison or in octaves.  The earliest music written for this four-course guitar was written in 16th century Spain.  The italians added an extra course to the instrument, and the tuning came to be standardised as A, D, G, B, E.. much like the 5 highest strings of the modern electric guitar.

A century later a sixth course of strings was added to the guitar, making something very similar to what we would recognise today as a 12-string guitar.  The six-course arrangement was replaced by six single strings gradually, to allow for more technical playing and intricate single note lines that would be too cumbersome to play on a guitar with more strings in each course.  Spanish guitar makers then added a “fan” style bracing that is still used on classical guitars today.  This bracing allowed extra strength, which let guitar makers build a wider guitar.

Up to this point, guitars were still built with animal gut strings.  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, steel strings were developed.  These were initally not used on guitars, as the designs of the period could not withstand the much greater tension that steel strings put on the body.  It took the development of a much stronger “X” brace to allow for steel string guitars.  These steel string guitars had a much louder and brighter sound.  They were also extremely important to the eventual development of the electric guitar, because a vibrating steel string, unlike a gut string, can induce an electric signal in a magnetic pickup.  If steel string acoustic guitars were never developed, it is unlikely that we would have the electric guitar that we know today, as magnetic pickups are crucial to the traditional sound of an electric guitar.

EDIT: sorry dudes – wordpress seems to not want to embed the youtube vidoes properly – i’ll try to sort it all out.

Technorati Tags: chitarra, Electric Guitar history, six-course guitars

It is a scary thing to consider, but for most of human history people have lived their whole lives without ever having had the chance to plug their axe into their stack and shred some mad licks. If we go back in time, to a period in the dim and distant past, approximately 4000 years before the invention of the Floyd Rose tremolo bridge and of hot pink leopard print spandex pants, we start to see the very first ancestors of the electric guitar to be found by archaeologists.

The very first stringed instrument with a neck and body was a bowl harp, found in ancient egypt, sumeria and babylon.  It was a fairly crude instrument, consisting of a stick, bent under tension from the strings, with a tortoise shell or a carved wooden body.  The strings were made from silk or from animal gut, and were probably plucked with the fingers.  The strings were simply tied to each end of the instrument, making tuning a rather haphazard affair and as there was no way to fret or otherwise shorten the string, the player was limited to one note for each string.  If the player wanted more notes, they needed more strings – a situation similar in this regard to a modern-day piano or harp.

Slightly more guitar-like was the tanbur, found in the same region.  The tanbur was a more sophisticated development from the bowl harp, and some of them had a long, fairly flat, fretted neck, and a flat wooden body.  These tanburs could be plucked with a plectrum or with a fingernail, making them not too dissimilar to the guitars and banjos we are familiar with today.  Dating to around 3000 years ago, these instruments are probably the ultimate vintage guitars.  And like most vintage guitars, people accustomed to learning guitar on current production instruments will probably find most of them rather unplayable.

Fretted instruments took a little longer to arrive in europe.  The Moors in Spain brought their Oud to Spain.  The oud was a short, thin necked fretless instrument with many strings, a sharply angled peghead and a large, round body.  The europeans added frets to the oud, calling it a “lute”.  Guitars did not descend directly from lutes, however the lute was a forerunner of the guitar in european music, and much early classical guitar music was rearranged from lute scores.  Centuries before the Scorpions rocked you like a hurricane, lute players could be considered among the first rock stars of old europe: lute players were a common subject of rennaissance painting, and were depicted elaborately dressed, often with tight pants and long hair.

While the lute had the role of the guitar in european music, the direct ancestors of the electric guitar come from further away, in Central Asia.  The name “guitar” has its roots in Sanskrit, the old tongue from which the languages of northern India and Central Asia originated.  The ancient Sanskrit word “string” was “tar”, and stringed folk instruments were named for the number of strings they had.  A two-stringed instrument was known as a dotar, from the Sanskrit “dvi”, meaning two.  A three stringed instrument was called a setar, which with the addition of numerous other strings became the indian sitar while a five stringed one was known as a panchtar.  It is the four stringed chartar, with it’s long fretted neck, narrow waisted flat body, and tuning pegs on a slightly angled headstock that arrived in Spain and became known as the chitarra, which over the course of centuries eventually developed into the electric guitar we know and shred today.

Technorati Tags: being a shred god in rennaissance europe, chartar, Electric Guitar history, lute, oud, really old guitars

In my earlier post on guitar instruction methods I talk about why it is best to get private lessons from a good teacher.

I still think this is the ideal approach for learning electric guitar, for the same reasons that I listed before.  That is to say, that having a teacher right there in front of you and paying undivided attention to how you approach the instrument will give you a level of feedback on your playing that you just won’t get from books, dvds, magazines or downloadable courses.

But I gotta say there are some very good reasons why you might want to learn guitar without a teacher.

1) You can’t find a good teacher in your area

By all means, look for a great teacher, but be aware that not every teacher is great.  Some are incredible players, but just can’t communicate that well.  Others are great at teaching but are disorganised and unreliable and will make a habit of cancelling or rescheduling your lessons at the last minute.  Others are just lazy and don’t prepare their lessons properly.  A good guitar teacher is worth their weight in gold, but a bad one is just a waste of money, time and effort.. and even worse, they will leave you feeling discouraged about playing.  It’s much better to learn without a teacher, than to settle for a bad one.

2) You can find a good teacher, but they’re not right for you

Even a good teacher might not be the right person to help you do what you want to do.

Maybe you want to read music.  Plenty of good players have no idea how, and even a lot of good teachers aren’t that great at reading.

Maybe your goal is to rip out jaw dropping shred metal guitar solos.  This is not something that every or even most guitar students want to do, and a lot of otherwise great teachers will not know where to start with teaching extremely technical lead guitar.

Or perhaps you want to get really into gypsy jazz, or chicago blues.. and your teacher comes from a totally different background.  Whatever.  The thing to remember is that even though a teacher might be good or even great, it doesn’t mean that they are the best person to teach everything.

3) Money

This is a big one, and it’s true – guitar lessons cost money.  Usually not an extraordinary amount, but you have to pay for every lesson and it does add up over time.  I think a great teacher is worth paying for, but hey, not everyone can always afford it and if you’re short on cash then you’re short on cash.

If money is a problem for you at the moment, consider downloading some Guitar Instruction Software.  You do have to pay for the best programs, but they’re usually quite affordable (around about the cost of 1-2 weeks of private lessons), and you do get a LOT of useful material for the money you spend.

4) You want to learn at your own pace

A lot of teachers will want you to come in every week.  This is particularly true for professional teachers.. ie those who make their living solely or mainly from teaching guitar.  And you can understand why, after all they need to have a steady income just like everybody else, and students who only want a listen once every 3 weeks or just whenever they feel like it might not be worth the hassle.  For people who are serious about learning and can’t wait to get better, weekly lessons is a good thing.  But some people see guitar more as a bit of a hobby that they just toy around with in their spare time, and only occasionally look at tackling something new.  This is fair enough, so long as that is the approach to playing that you enjoy, and you might be better off without a teacher in that situation.

Technorati Tags: Guitar Instruction, guitar lessons, learning electric guitar

Blues guitar is a common starting point for new guitarists.  My first ever guitar lesson was learning a 12 bar blues in A, and it’s easy to see why it’s popular way for teachers to ease their students into playing – it’s a great way to introduce many fundamentals of playing guitar, such as playing chords, scales and keeping time to a beat.  Moreover, learnint to play blues guitar doesn’t just help aspiring blues musicians.  The blues have heavily influenced many other genres of modern guitar music, including Rock, Pop, Folk, Heavy Metal and Jazz.  This means that getting a grounding in the blues fairly essential for many aspiring players.

It’s with this in mind that I came across “Playing through the blues” by Griff Hamlin.  This is a course aimed at beginner and intermediate guitarists alike, made up of written, digital and audio material and delivered digitally over the internet.

So what’s in it?

Rhythm and Chords Module

This starts off at the basics of how to put together chords, then shows you how to use them in different 12 bar blues progressions.  The module then progresses to a lot of fancier stuff, such as minor blues and blues jazz progressions, detouring via some bone simple John Lee Hooker and ZZ Top inspired stuff along the way.

Lead Guitar Module

This is probably the meat of the course.  It starts off with some basic blues scales, and legato playing techniques.. which are the obvious places to start.  Even though it is labelled the “lead guitar” module,  it actually delves into a lot of rhythm playing too, and shows how the two skills interact.  I am a big fan of this approach to teaching, which is much more productive and helpful than creating a rigid and false distinction between lead and rhythm.  This is a great lead guitar primer, and you will definitely be able to play blues guitar solos once you’ve worked your way to the end.

Bonus Modules

Lessons From the Masters

This has some solos from famous blues guitarists (including Eric Clapton and B.B King), along with some
audio examples.  There are also “jam tracks” – the audio with only a rhythm backing, which is a nice touch for people like me who like to mess around with different variations instead of playing the same thing note for note.

Turnaround and Ending Licks

Now THIS was probably my favourite part of the course.  Basically it is a “swipe file” of different ways to end a 12 bar blues progression.  It includes some fairly classic licks, as well as few showing a bit of Griff’s personal touch.  Very cool stuff.

Bonus Jam Tracks

These are some rhythm tracks, in a variety of different keys and tempos.  The feel changes a lot too.. some are a shuffle, there are some straight up-tempo ones too, and some latin tracks too.

There are some more video bonuses, but I’m trying to write a blog post here, not War and Peace

Click here to read more about what this course includes

What I like about this course:

Griff Hamlin, the author, clearly loves playing the blues and the sense of fun and enjoyment he gets definitely comes through in all the material.

There is a “no nonsense” attitude in delivering the content.  In the printed material, the audio and the video he gets right to the point every time.  As the colloqiual expression goes, this course is “all beef” (My apologies to any vegetarian readers, but “all soy” just didn’t have the same ring to it ).

I like that this product comes with a No-Questions-Asked, 100% money back 56 day guarantee.  If you don’t like it, you can just get a refund.  This takes all the risk out of buying the product, and shows that Griff has a lot of faith in his product.  Very cool.

Griff doesn’t dumb anything down in presenting the material, but nor does he need to resort to the sort of unnecessarily technical musical thoery jargon typical of some academic textbooks.  Rather he tends to describe things using terms you hear from everyday working and gigging musicians.  You even get introduced to a little bit of musician’s slang from Griff.. for example, he refers to playing an accompaniment as “comping”.  This is great preparation for anybody who aspires to play alongisde other musicians, whether in a full-time band or just as a casual hobby.

Last but not least, this is all great material, and so long as you use it then you WILL learn to play blues guitar.

What I don’t like about it:

There is no fingering written on the pdf sheet music.  This is not a huge issue, as the entire course has video examples of  all the playing and you can very easily just look at how he is fingering everything he plays.  It would be nice touch though if the fingerings written in the sheet music too.

Most of this content is geared to beginner or intermediate guitarists.  Advanced players who are from a non-blues background will also benefit from it, though they will power through it pretty quickly.  But people who have been playing blues guitar for several years already will find that a lot of the material is old news.  That said, I started playing blues 16 years ago, and I did find a few new tricks and ideas here (most of them in the bonus material).

Is it value for money?

Well – long story short – yes, it is.  As far as guitar instructional materials in general go, the amount of high quality content you get here is just incredible.  If you are wanting to learn to play blues on guitar, you would do well to buy it.

The sales page does compare this $47 course to the cost of the year’s worth of private lessons it would take to learn all of this material.  I take issue with this comparison, for a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that different students learn at different rates, and the very keenest of them could probably cover all of the material in a matter of months.  The other thing is that asking how much it would cost to learn this from a teacher is just not a valid comparison at all, because you’re not getting private lessons here.  Even the best course will not offer you the kind of valuable feedback you get from spending time with a great teacher.  It seems a shame that they feel the need to make over the top comparisons like this, as the material really is good enough to stand up on its own merits.

That problem aside, if you compare this course to other hardcopy or downloadable instructional materials you could buy with the same money, there’s no arguing that you get an enormous amount of value here.  I remember when I was first learning guitar in the early 90s, well before the advent of downloadable guitar courses like this one, I was lucky enough to have my parents pay for weekly lessons from a private teacher who taught at the school I went to.  I was always hungry for more things to learn though, and I often spent the few dollars I had on magazines like Guitar World, as well as the occasional instruction manual.  I actually feel a little jealous of people starting out now, because the sheer AMOUNT of material you can get from some of these downloadable guitar courses, as well as the exceptional quality some of them offer, really dwarfs anything we had on offer 16 years ago.

Click here to go the sales page for “playing through the blues”..

Also consider:

Jamorama

At the time of publishing this is a slightly cheaper, and for the beginner on a budget it offers amazing value for money.  This course covers Rock, Pop as well as Blues, so might also be a good option for people who aren’t sure they’re into blues enough to buy a course that only teaches blues guitar.

50 Blues Jam Tracks

This is a backing track collection, rather than a complete blues course.  It does however feature quite a lot of instructional material thrown in as a bonus.  If you’ve been playing blues for a while now, and already know your way around basic major and minor blues scales and rhythm progressions, you might really dig this.  The tracks themselves are very well recorded and feature a hot blues band – it’s not the cheesy computer sequenced midi stuff you sometimes see sold as “backing tracks”.  They also cover an in-depth variety of different styles of blues, featuring several funk blues and bluesy jazz arrangements amongst the tracks.

Technorati Tags: Blues, Blues Guitar, Guitar Instruction, Learn electric guitar, Playing through the blues, review