Should I get SWS? I'm more into classic country.

[Chief Rick]

I have BGU and it's teaching me a lot.  I love Griff's teaching style, and I'm currently working on lesson 11, Minor Blues.  But eventually I plan to move more toward classic country sounds.  SWS is on sale now but I don't know if it is the way for me to go once I finish BGU.  Can anyone tell me if SWS will help, or if there is some other course I should consider to learn that twang?

 

[Marv]

SWS is useful for anything you plan to do using the pentatonic scale without memorizing all the box patterns you find in BGU.  You basically learn to find and link all the little "4-note solo" boxes around the root notes on the neck so you can play all over in any key. I found it very helpful!

 

[MikeS]

I agree with Marv. Once I started using SWS, my soloing made a jump ahead. Having said that, I don't know that it will particularly help you with "that twang".
You might want to check out Griff's friend Arnie Newman.
( http://www.arnienewman.com/ )
Arnie is a master of the twang. Arnie did a class for us at BGU Live 2013. Much of it went by too quickly for me to really get a lot out of it, but I could tell that if I had spent some time with Arnie and his instruction, I'd have come away with some really great country licks.

 

[luckylarry]

Mike has great advice regarding Arnie. Another thought is that if you like Griffs teaching style his Strumming and rhythm Mastery course would really help you as well. 

 

[Chief Rick]

I think I'll stick with Griff for a while longer to develop my skills, but I did find a great deal on http://www.freewebs.com/groovymusiclessons/ where Scott Grove will sell you 190 hours of his videos for only $49.95 to download.  He is an accomplished professional country musician with an awesome guitar collection, and he seems to be able to play almost anything with strings or a keyboard.

 

[Marv]

Scott is a little out there, but I never seem to fail to get something out of his videos.  Sometime it's just a good laugh, but that's good too.

 

[Griff]

For country you might actually get more out of 5 Easy Blues Solos. There are a couple of major pentatonic patterns I use in there that I don't use as much in anything else (though they do show up in SWS as well, come to think of it.) I just think that the solos in 5 Easy Blues Solos might be more appealing if you like country.

That being said, Arnie is amazing but I haven't been able to nail him down to do a course for me. And I hear he got a new gig but won't say what yet...

 

[giayank]

  For me SWS opened the door ,turned the light on and drove the point home all at once . It made my whole approach to soloing  change . I have BGU and SWS to me they go hand in hand . SWS is a fun course that can help you play any style you choose to play in the Rock, country and blues styles . It's not technically difficult to do .So you can start playing it's approach quickly . The tone and expertise that Griff has is another thing . I don't mean to say you can master the course quickly but the idea and the approach to playing is something you can quickly incorporate into your playing style .

 

[joeblues27]

I played in a country band about 15 yrs ago...our lead player used the SWS concept all the time. So can testify this course works for all genere's of music!