30 Day Guitar Challenge from Keith Wyatt: "Internal Metronome"
Thu, 01/21/2016 - 3:37pm
“It’s not an obvious technique but it’s something that pays off big time in terms of musicianship and your overall feel for the music. It just makes music more fun to play.” - Keith Wyatt
We sent this out in an email but in case you missed it, here’s a great practice tip from Keith Wyatt about improving your internal metronome. The idea is to work on this exercise for 30 days and by the end of it you should see some results. If you’re one of Keith’s students, be sure to send him a video showing him how it’s working for you.
How I Started Playing Blues Guitar - Keith Wyatt
Fri, 10/23/2015 - 10:20am
I was drawn to the sound of guitars and blues long before I knew anything about either one. My earliest musical memory is of “Heartbreak Hotel” blasting out of the dashboard of my parents’ Hudson Hornet; I must have heard hours of music from that same radio, but that’s the only bit that stuck.
A few years later, guitar instrumentals by artists like the Ventures, Link Wray, and Booker T & the MGs made my hair stand up. As rock & roll morphed into rock, the guitar-based sounds of the Kinks and Stones, then Hendrix, Cream, Zeppelin, and Beck overshadowed everything else. Guitar rang loud and clear, but even after I started playing I didn’t fully appreciate the blues connection.
My heroes raved about guys named Johnson and King, but what little “real” blues I actually heard sounded kind of old and scratchy - I appreciated it more than I was inspired by it. That all changed a few years later when - now driving my own car - I heard Albert King’s “The Sky is Crying” and had to pull over. I got it.
10 Best Classic Blues Guitar Songs
Wed, 08/05/2015 - 11:49am
click here for free sample blues guitar lessons!
There's something about the blues that connects with people on an emotional level. The music itself was born out of the struggle of human experience, and who can't relate to that?
Keith Wyatt has a ton of great information about the history of the blues in his lessons here at ArtistWorks. The blues sound we all love today came out of the African American experience of working in the fields and singing in church. While certain chord structures and lyrical forms can be traced back to Western Africa, most people were first exposed to the blues in the rural south during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, specifically in the Mississippi Delta. It was here that many musical tropes started cementing themsilves in the blues, such as harmonica accompaniment and the use of slide guitar. As many African American folks migrated to large cities after World War II, major metropolitan areas like Chicago, Memphis and St. Louis became Meccas for early blues musicians.
Here are 10 classic blues guitar songs that reflect that journey.
Chicago / The Blues / Today! Turns 50
Mon, 07/06/2015 - 5:33pm
Last month in mid-June my band (the Blasters) played a couple of nights at Fitzgerald’s in the West side Chicago neighborhood of Berwyn and we were lucky once again to have Chicago blues legend Billy Boy Arnold join us as a guest artist. Sixty years ago, Billy Boy recorded his first hit single for Vee-Jay Records, including the future blues standards “I Wish You Would” and “I Ain’t Got You.”
Although just 20 years old at the time of its release, Billy Boy had already studied harp with Chicago legend John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson AKA “Sonny Boy I” and knew or had played with most of the leading lights of Chicago blues, not to mention performing on the hit single “I’m A Man” with his childhood friend Bo Diddley.
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