January 26, 20200Comments

Melodic Devices For Creating Lines

Of all the “tricks” that guitar players use to create more interesting lines, this one probably took me the longest to figure out… And you can call them...

by Griff

Lessons

January 24, 20207Comments

The Blues Half Step Scale – The Altered Dominant Sound

In talking about more Modern Blues Soloing, and getting away from the standard Pentatonic and Blues scales for a bit, one of the things we have to discuss is the way chords...

by Griff

Lessons

January 22, 20207Comments

The Lydian Dominant Sound

Surprisingly to many blues players, the minor pentatonic and blues scales aren’t actually the best fit for a lot of chords we play… In general, the minor...

by Griff

Lessons

January 20, 20207Comments

Borrowing Arpeggios…

This is a concept that I hear a lot in playing by modern blues players like Matt Schofield, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, and others. It involves using a bit of music theory to...

by Griff

Lessons

January 17, 20209Comments

Jazz It Up – The I VI II V Turnaround (and more)

In a previous video we talked about using a ii-V instead of the V-VI in bars 9 and 10 of the 12 bar blues…. And in that video, I mentioned that the ii-V is often...

by Griff

Lessons

January 15, 20205Comments

That ii V Move In A Blues…

In this blues guitar lesson we’ll talk about one of the common-er jazz/jump style variations. It’s a ii-V (two-five) move over bars 9 and 10 of the 12 bar blues...

January 14, 202018Comments

Pick, Fingers, Claw… Yes!

Albert King always used his fingers to pluck the strings… Stevie Ray Vaughan pretty much always used a pick… Robben Ford uses sort of a “claw” with...

by Griff

Lessons

January 10, 202013Comments

Brown Sugar Tweedly Noodling

This is kind of hard to explain, but I think you’ll find it fun… One of my students was asking about the intro to ZZ Top’s tune, “Brown Sugar,”...

by Griff

Lessons

January 8, 20206Comments

A Beginning Fingerstyle Pattern

I know it’s not blues, but sometimes it’s just fun to try a little something different… This is a simple fingerstyle pattern that is a good way to start to...

by Griff

Lessons

January 6, 202014Comments

Pentatonics With Interval Patterns

A lot of times my students will learn box 1 (and maybe box 2) of the pentatonic scale really well… But then when it comes to boxes 4 and 5… not so much....

by Griff

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