5 Fundamental Tips for Playing Blues Guitar
Fri, 06/02/2017 - 11:02am
As you are developing your skills as a blues guitarist, you will at some point hit a plateau and feel that your progress has slowed or even stopped. This is perfectly normal while learning any instrument, so it’s important to develop some ways to work through the rut. Take it as an opportunity to re-think some common assumptions about what and how to practice - here are a few tips that are covered in various lessons from the Blues Guitar School by Keith Wyatt:
1. Swing is the Thing
Guitar players tend to rush right to the bright, shiny object, i.e. the solo, but to paraphrase Duke Ellington, your licks don’t mean a thing without that swing. Developing a confident rhythm feel, especially for the shuffle, is the foundation of everything else you do in blues, and expanding your rhythmic vocabulary is one of the best ways to re-charge your playing style.
4 Essential Bluegrass Guitar Scales: Beginner Lesson
Tue, 05/30/2017 - 11:55am
If you love bluegrass guitar you owe it to yourself to check out Bryan Sutton's lessons at ArtistWorks. Click here for free sample lessons!
You must learn to walk before you learn to run. When it comes to flatpicking, you must first learn your scales before learning to shred.
Learning some of the commonly used scales is a critical step towards advancing your skills as a bluegrass guitarist. As with any instrument, it's very important to make sure that you're taking your time with the basics before moving onto more complicated techniques and theories. Let’s go over some essential guitar scales you will want to learn early on before moving on to the more advanced concepts.
With some of these basic bluegrass guitar scales under your belt, you'll have a great foundation to build on when it comes to playing leads and improvising.
Practicing Blues Guitar
Sat, 11/12/2016 - 6:07pm
It’s obvious that you can’t get really good at anything without practicing, but when it comes to the question of how to practice things aren’t as clear. The fact is that there is no one-size-fits-all best approach to practicing, but whether you’re playing blues for recreation or to reach a professional level, here are some ideas that will help you get the most out of your efforts.
What is practicing?
Guitar players today tend to think of practicing in terms of technical exercises like scales and arpeggios, but traditionally, blues guitar players rarely if ever took that approach. Instead, they learned by copying more experienced players, whether a relative, a local performer, or from a record, and practiced by perfecting actual phrases and songs. The result is usually a narrowly-focused set of skills, but the blues tradition values style and personality over generic technique and what the great blues guitarists lack in terms of range they make up for in depth.
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