PeterRichman
Blues Newbie
Hi
This is Pete from Arizona. Always dreamed of taking up guitar and finally at age 52 started doing so about 4 months ago. With a love of rock music, I slowly realized blues was a nice manageable area of playing to focus on and go from there as the foundation of that genre. Griff's practical approach on youtube was very inspiring as he "gets it" that people/beginners want to play not just work on scales etc so I landed at BGU. My approach at this point has been to work on finger exercises daily, work on common shuffles/stretch fingers, handle the minor pentatonic in all positions, add in blues notes, solo to backing tracks in common keys, learn some dominant 7th arpeggios so I could solo with the chords, and watch videos on techniques of those I want to most emulate (i.e. SRV who I was lucky to see twice, Clapton/saw in 1990 and excited to see tomorrow night in Phoenix especially now that I play a little, Hendrix). I am working on learning the major pentatonic (which is really just changing up landing spots and where the roots are as compared to minor pentatonic shapes). I have lots of trouble with keeping time and do most things with a metronome and am following Griff's advice to count out loud (unlike everything else this is going slowly). While overall progress soloing/finger speed/etc has been pretty solid, my learning was a little too disjointed, so I bought the BGU package to work on regularly in order of content along with the things I am already focused on. I would greatly appreciate any advice, additional thoughts as to how to go forward. As I am an ER doctor who only works about 100 hours a month, when I am not chasing 5 kids, I have about 1-2 hours to practice a day and am pretty dedicated.
Best regards,
Pete
This is Pete from Arizona. Always dreamed of taking up guitar and finally at age 52 started doing so about 4 months ago. With a love of rock music, I slowly realized blues was a nice manageable area of playing to focus on and go from there as the foundation of that genre. Griff's practical approach on youtube was very inspiring as he "gets it" that people/beginners want to play not just work on scales etc so I landed at BGU. My approach at this point has been to work on finger exercises daily, work on common shuffles/stretch fingers, handle the minor pentatonic in all positions, add in blues notes, solo to backing tracks in common keys, learn some dominant 7th arpeggios so I could solo with the chords, and watch videos on techniques of those I want to most emulate (i.e. SRV who I was lucky to see twice, Clapton/saw in 1990 and excited to see tomorrow night in Phoenix especially now that I play a little, Hendrix). I am working on learning the major pentatonic (which is really just changing up landing spots and where the roots are as compared to minor pentatonic shapes). I have lots of trouble with keeping time and do most things with a metronome and am following Griff's advice to count out loud (unlike everything else this is going slowly). While overall progress soloing/finger speed/etc has been pretty solid, my learning was a little too disjointed, so I bought the BGU package to work on regularly in order of content along with the things I am already focused on. I would greatly appreciate any advice, additional thoughts as to how to go forward. As I am an ER doctor who only works about 100 hours a month, when I am not chasing 5 kids, I have about 1-2 hours to practice a day and am pretty dedicated.
Best regards,
Pete
Have fun learning the blues.
