Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'

Subject: RE: Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From: Max
Date: 13 Apr 00 - 01:01 PM

Just tell em to fall in love with someone they know will break their heart. That's the only way to start.

After that, Stefan Grossman's stuff is GREAT!

Subject: RE: Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From:
Date: 13 Apr 00 - 12:57 PM

HI, I took out from my local library a book called

"The Complete Blues and Ragtime Guitar Player" by Russ Shipton, Wise Publications

Starts out with basic blues strums, with picture chords, then into fingestyle blues.

Includes a good number of popular songs.

I think it's exactaly what you are looking for.

Casey

Subject: RE: Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From: M. Ted (inactive)
Date: 12 Apr 00 - 07:13 PM

Woolworth's? I thought that they went out of business a while back--too bad, because I loved the lunch counter--

My contribution, having actually taught blues guitar to doxens of satisfied people of all ages, is to remember that if you learn to play one Blues song, all the rest of it will fall in--get someone to show you (don't fool with the tapes, or books at first) how to play "Bright Lights, Big City" or "Kansas City" then play it to death---

Subject: RE: Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From: Grab
Date: 12 Apr 00 - 08:35 AM

Bought a blues book once with a cover-CD. Turns out that all of it was just variations on I-IV-V. Bsides, books of '100 greatest licks' are a waste of space - since when was a flashy lick (if you'll pardon the expression ;-) more important than a good song? The main attraction with them is getting the jam track CD, so you don't have to keep the bass-line going as well (the biggest problem for solo blues stuff).

Blues CDs are dirt cheap at Woolworths and places like that - you can pick up John Lee Hooker stuff and the like for next to nothing. If your young person has a reasonable grasp of chords, they'll probably get more enjoyment out of listening to it and messing about over the top. JLH is good for that cos he doesn't do lots of fast stuff and his music is pretty spare (not prone to filling every available space with notes!), which makes it easy to jam to.

Grab.

Subject: RE: Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From:
Date: 12 Apr 00 - 07:10 AM

Stefan Grossman's website is http://www.guitarvideos.com

The website for Happy Traum is http://www.homespuntapes.com

I don't have a Guitar Workshop catalogue with me at the moment; but Stefan Grossman has one set of beginning blues guitar lessons and one called something like "Essential Fingerpicking" which is based on fingerpicking blues pieces. They also offer some lessons on beginning blues guitar by Fred Sokolow. I have owned these lessons for a while and have just looked at them. If your friend wants to learn to sing and play, I think these Sokolow lessons are the best. They consist of three tapes and a booklet. He has about eight songs of different types. The first type starts out with you strumming the chords and singing along with different strum patterns and keys. The second tape takes essentially the same songs and has you doing more complicated accompanyment. The third tape has you playing an alternating bass, fingerpicking accompanyment while you sing.

One of the great problems in learning to sing the blues is that the accompanyment is so complicated and syncopated that it is hard to get the voice and guitar parts together. With these lessons you get the feeling of how the songs fit in with the chord changes before you try to sing with a complicated guitar part. I think one can learn to figure out the chords from hearing unknown songs and then graft into the method to make a sophisticated guitar part.

Most blues guitar lessons tend to teach you the guitar parts and leave it to you to fit in the song. You have to be pretty comfortable with the guitar before you can master the parts and then learn to sing with them.

Homespun Tapes (Happy Traum) offers a lot of beginning tapes; but I haven't tried any of them. Both offer video lessons too; but I haven't tried them either.

Luck

Murray

Subject: RE: Help: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From: ddw
Date: 11 Apr 00 - 11:26 PM

Hey, Banjoman — good to see you on the 'Cat. Missed your posts.

To your questions, take a run to Elderly and look through their selection. Don't know what your pupil's playing level is, but if he/she has any expertise at all, both Happy Traum and Stefan Grossman have good tablature books; the latter have CDs in them so you can hear the songs while you're looking at the tab. I personally think it's the best way to learn blues — or anything else.

david

Subject: Help with 'beginning blues books'
From: Banjoman_CO
Date: 11 Apr 00 - 10:31 PM

Hey gang, I have a young person who wants to learn to play blues guitar. I play a little blues that I learned from others but I don't know enough to teach others. Are there any beginning blues guitar books out there. I've looked in the only music stores in my area to no avail. Appreciate your help.

Banjoman