Working Class Guitar

[AX17609]

There are many paths to electric guitar enlightenment. The signpost for one of them is labelled "blues". If this is your desired path, I can recommend no better training site than Corey Congelio's "Working Class Guitar".

I'm virtually a professional guitar student. It doesn't pay well, but I've learned a lot about the art and science of musical education. I've taken a lot of video training in my life involving different instruments and a variety of styles. Some courses have been good; some have been terrible. WCG is one of the best training sites I've ever encountered. I've been thru about 90% of it, so I'm speaking from experience, not aspiration.

The site is directed at guitarists who have mastered beginner chords at the nut and now want to move up the ladder of competence by learning blues rhythm and leads up the neck. It consists of 20 structured courses, each designed to take a student from Point A to Point Z. In other words, it's not just a collection of tips. It's an organized series of courses, each of which moves you farther along the path.

Were I to recommend a course order, it would be as follows:

• Beginner Blues Rhythm
• Intermediate Blues Rhythm
• Complete Blues Volume 1
• Beginner Blues Lead Guitar
• Major Pentatonics Unlocked
• Dominant 7 Arpeggio Soloing Handbook
• Blues Guitar by Yourself
• Blues Rock Connection
• Blues Licks by the Greats
• Under the Influence: Texas Blues SRV Edition
• Complete Blues Guitar Volume 2

If you want to go 'Nashville' after that, he's got a new course on Hybrid Picking Fundamentals. There is also a free course called Tone Talk in which he discusses gear. Mastering tone is super important in this genre.

You can buy access to these courses individually, or you can subscribe to the site for a modest monthly fee. If you do the latter, in addition to full site access you can attend Corey's monthly Zoom calls and ask questions. There's a 14-day free trial of the full access pass.

If you elect the free trial, I highly recommend going thru each course and listening to Corey play every one of the pieces he's going to teach. Ask yourself, "do I want to learn to play like that?" If the answer is "yes", then you've found your teacher.


[I receive no compensation for this recommendation. I'm just a student.]

[GoPappy]

Thanks for this post! As of 1/1/24 I will be semi-retired and, hopefully, will finally have the time to pursue some guitar training and practice courses. I've wanted to do this for a long, but never had the time. As a huge blues fan, the WCG course sounds like it would be right down my alley.

[WSR]

I have a lot of Corey's courses through Truefire, Brettpapa and Udemy. I will have to check out his site as well as I'm looking for something that will inspire me more at this point. (I'm also looking for something that focuses on Theory more as I want to understand things more, rather than just showing me licks and rhythms.

[Brent Hutto]

So you have your experimented with other styles and just decided Blues is the only one that does it for you, inspiration-wise. I ask because that looks like a several-year curriculum and a bunch of lessons, a big commitment to one specific style.

[AX17609]

Originally Posted by Brent Hutto

So you have your experimented with other styles and just decided Blues is the only one that does it for you, inspiration-wise. I ask because that looks like a several-year curriculum and a bunch of lessons, a big commitment to one specific style.

I'm not an evangelist for the blues. I'm just on that path and always have been. In that capacity I'm suggesting that Corey's site is an excellent way to pursue the genre. I did all the courses listed in my original post in about 4-5 months, BUT I already have an extensive history. I played blues/rock before anyone thought to call it "classic". I had to go backwards to uncover its fundamental roots. My hands can already handle the fundamentals of bends, vibrato and bent-string vibrato.

The course will take a student along the main path of the blues as it descends from the Kings and their contemporaries, but it also lightly touches related disciplines like R&B, swing, funk, jazz/blues, and country/blues. By the end of the course, the student would know enough about what's going on in those areas to purse extended study, if so interested.