Acoustic Blues For Beginner

[journeyman73]

Hi All,

i am looking to go from only playing electric to being able to play some acoustic blues fingerstyle guitar. Really would love to learn stuff in the mold of robert johnson, big bill broonzy, clapton, etc.

i know there are a lot of fingerstyle instructional dvd's out there but does anybody know of any that would be oriented more toward the genre i am interested in?

thanks!

[Bingoccc]

Try Rory Block

[Short Balding G]

JM73; Lots of good resources to chose from.
Stefan Grossman's Workshop http://guitarvideos.com/
Traum - Homespun http://www.homespuntapes.com/

The two above are of the big providers of the DVD lesson materials, and books. Lots of grand stuff. Grossman's site also has a well written piece to help identify what "level" player you are and assisiting you in choosing materials.

You can visit and read/listen/post to the place were most internet acoustic blues techno-weenies go for info - Weenie Cambell. The web site has some of the most detailed discussions I read. Great info. http://weeniecampbell.com/mambo/inde...smf&Itemid=128

On-line materials just are prolific. I advocate, use and visit daily Little Brother's materials and website. http://littlebrotherblues.com/ Little Brother Blues has some really basic lessons. He goes at a snail pace, just what this boy needed at the time, and got to the important stuff (the song) swiftly. Within a short bit I was playing a a song that was recognizable. That said the MOST valuable part is the invite to join the private forum. We speak about the acoustic blues songs, guitars, share recordings and generally all things acoustic blues. The forum members are a group of folks from all over the world and are led by Doug (little Brother) in a spirit of sharing the music forward. It is a safe haven n the internet morass that exists in the wider world. Lessons= excellent. Forum=excellent.

If you can narrow down to an artist of even a song I may be able to assist pointing you in a direction.

Best, Eric -

[Fatstrat]

There some free tutorials on Youtube.

[Bingoccc]

http://www.youtube.com/deltabluestips

Check this guy out.

[oldhippiegal]

I had good luck searching "Shuffle blues acoustic lesson" (Johnson often uses the standard shuffle with fill ins and riffs over it) on youtube. Also, knowing the pentatonic/blues scales for improvising/solos is crucial. If you do know that already, great--if not, search for that, too. "Blues scale acoustic lesson" blah blah.

I get a couple hundred hits on each, and every video might have something new to teach me. And it doesn't hurt to look at the electric lessons, as well. (I wish I was on line more than a couple hours per week and could really go through them all!) I liked this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmIeah8K1cE&feature=fvw

I also listen a lot to this type of blues--my MP3 player is loaded with it. Anytime I hear something new, I pick up the guitar and replicated it--ahh, I see, that's a hammer-on in the bass, frets 2 then 3 then 4 hammered on. Once I understand it, it becomes "mine."

My local library has some rock riffs guitar videos, and I've learned something off each of those, too. I also very carefully read through a Clapton as-recorded Hal Leonard guitar book (also courtesy of my library) and played several of the solos to see what was going on there.

The wiki on the blues scale is here, for anyone brand new to the idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_scale . And the first external link on that article has printable charts for the pentatonic and blues scales, though to me those were gibberish until I saw them played on a guitar. It has been well worth my while to learn the Em pentatonic, then blues scale, up to fret 15. I'm finding it easy to change keys now that I have that under my fingers. It's getting the shapes ingrained, figuring out where the bends work within those shapes, and getting all that down in one key that seemed most useful to me. Now it's pretty easy to move it up and down the neck to new keys.

I spend 15 minutes every day just improving on an E or A shuffle blues. It's really quite fun, becoming more so as my bag of tricks gets bigger.

But, as I've said elsewhere, I'm largely self-taught (plus several videos helping) and I might not be the best source for saying "this is how one does this." HTH and Best of luck!