Book Description
Unlock the secrets of blues guitar! Ace session guitarist Mat Gurman teaches budding bluesmasters 50 terrific phrases, demonstrating licks for dominant and minor blues progressions, turnarounds, intro licks, ending licks, stop time licks and many more. He also shows players the classic techniques used in blues guitar, such as: bends, pull-offs, hammer-ons, slides, slurs, vibrato, muted string raking and more! Each lick is played in context, then demonstrated slowly with full explanations of every technique used. Includes an instructional booklet. 59 minutes.
Customer Reviews:
Not For The Beginner Guitarist, But Some COOL Licks!.......2007-08-22
My Background:
In order to level set you as to my comments here is a little about me. I have been playing pretty consistently for about 1.5 years. I still consider myself a novice guitar player. I know 1/2 dozen cords, a few songs, some typical beginner licks and have been practicing the A major and A minor pentatonic scales both in the first position. I am pretty good with those two scales. I have no problem reading most guitar tablature.
What You Need To Know
This is just my opinion. It is key that you can read guitar tablature. Also, it would be VERY helpful if you knew many (more than I do) of the pentatonic scales and several of the positions for each (there are 5 positions for each scale). Mat (the instructor) only shows you one scale and in a single position (A Major "Blues" scale). He does this very quickly at the start of the DVD. It would also be very helpful if you are proficient at bends, hammer ons, pull offs and slides. You will also do better if you have some skill in a few different strumming techniques, including muted tones. Clearly all of these are key elements of blues guitar (actually any guitar work) and he uses them in abundance.
The Instruction and Licks:
As I mentioned he does show one of the scales he calls the "A" blues scale. However he is all over the place on the fret board (uses far more than just this one scale) and if you don't have some degree of proficiency in playing scales you will not get much from this DVD. He also shows you quickly how to tune a guitar. However I'm guessing that anyone who would remotely be able to use this DVD would already know how to do that.
The licks he shows are very cool and if you can learn some of them they can be strung together to really jam. They range widely in level of complexity. There are a few that could be played by a beginner who has little experience (although they are the exception). Any beginner trying to learn these licks would have to be highly motivated and determined. Mat does include the tablature for each of the licks which is very good. In most places on the DVD he shows both of his hands so you can see the fret work as well and the picking. He does slow his playing down and for the most part you can figure out what he is doing. However he is so versed in what he is doing that he does sometimes make assumptions that you understand what he just did or what he is telling you. This is where it will be difficult for beginners.
Bottom Line:
Pretty cool DVD. With my current skill level I will be able to make some use out of it but by in large it is a little beyond me still. That said I am still very happy I bought it because I am sick of just practicing scales up and down, up and down, without doing anything cool. You can not even get 30 minutes of live guitar lessons for $10. The DVD is done well enough such that if you have some ability to play and want to check out some cool licks it is well worth the money.
Not as good as I had hoped........2007-05-07
Having recently revived my desire to improve on the guitar, I purchased this video. I had just purchsed another DVD with which I was very happy and decided that any decent guitarist needed some blues licks in their repertoire. I had a more difficult time following along with this one than I did on the previous purchase. This one comes with a hard copy of the Tabulature but I'm convinced that in many places, the Tabs don't match what he says to play or actually does play. That's a little frustrating for me. I do give it 3 stars because I do think as I improve, there will be some learning opportunities, but at my current skill level, it's a bit over my head so that makes it not very valuable for now. Perhaps there should be a grading/age/skill level system like they do for kids' toys that allows for consumers to judge how advanced you need to be to get value from a product or if it's even suitable.
Finally, a Blues Guitar DVD with some MEAT!.......2005-07-30
Mat and would not hit it off. Instant personality clash for sure. Then again I didn't buy this DVD to make friends. I bought it to learn blues. 50 good usable licks presented in a way that you can actually learn them. Good camera angles, the sound is fair. Tab could be onscreen but I guess the booklet works just fine. Just the thing for the early intermediate player.
This DVD spends a lot of time in my player!
Customer Reviews:
Complete waste of money - rip off - don't buy .......2005-06-25
I feel like such a sucker for buying this. The DVD displays the tab (your TV is now a giant tab sheet) for each of the 50 riffs while listening to Curt(?) playing it first at normal speed and then a little slower. Wow! How revolutionary! Kind of like looking at the tab sheets and playing a CD.
Don't waste you money on this. No insight to EVH technique is revealed here. Curt Mitchell must have really needed money to go ahead with this. Don't give him any!!! The absolute worst piece of crap I've ever bought. Can you tell I'm disappointed with this?
If you still want it, I'll gladly sell you mine. Used only once!
Best Teacher Anywhere!.......2004-10-31
I am a slow learner and the way this was taught and shown was excellent! Each guitar lead lick was played slow then up to speed. And for someone like me to be able to learn this style of guitar technique was quite a feat let me tell ya. I have used others by this master teacher and he knows his stuff.
Product Description
Musicians Institute instructor Tom Kolb teaches licks in the styles of rock guitar masters such as Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson, the Allman Brothers, Keith Richards, Chuck Berry, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Satriani, Billy Gibbons, Dave Navarro, Mark Knopfler, and other great players! He explains how to apply the licks over certain chords or progressions, and covers techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, vibrato, bends, octaves, harmonics, whammy bar, double stops, sequencing of scales, intervallic licks, arpeggios, and many more. Includes a helpful instructional booklet.
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- Behaving Badly
- Blues Collection: Live at Wilebski's
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