1/05/2012

Blues Guitar Lessons And Tablature

By Jim Bruce


When starting out to search for those ideal lessons for guitar, many people would go to the all-seeing 'G', and 'Google it'. More and more searches for everything imaginable are made on Youtube, in fact it's the 2nd most popular search engine after Google itself. Like Google, the number of items shown for a term like 'blues guitar lessons' is formidable - how to choose the instruction that's best for you? Youtube guitar lessons feature all manner of styles and instruction levels, both paid and free of charge.

Some of the big boys in guitar lesson sales have developed a very effective selling style that employ many forms of psychological hooks to induce you to purchase. Only a beginner? That's OK - you'll be picking like a professional in 2 days. Intermediate player? We'll raise your playing up a notch. Experienced player? This instruction will transform you into Eric Clapton, and you get the picture. Amongst my favorites is the ubiquitous advert 'The Three Major Mistakes That 90% Of Guitarists Make", or something of that style, which is almost hard to resist, it must be admitted. Truth is, playing great guitar takes application, commitment and time. Naturally, the whole thing can be made quicker with clear-cut teaching and correct blues guitar tabs.

Guitar tablature is the back bone of the best guitar lessons. It doesn't have to be incredibly complicated in the least, with just elementary notation indicating finger positions and chord diagrams. Some tablature just goes too far, attempting to convey the feel and style of authentic blues picking, which it can't possible do! This leads us to the next characteristic of great blues guitar lessons - the teacher should be able to play the stuff to a high level (and that tablature should adequately represent what he does.)

Guitar tablature alone isn't enough to explain that subtle pause, or the thumb strike that is slightly behind the beat when needed to accentuate the words. Of course, the tab can show that a monotonic thumb stroke should be damped with the palm of the hand, but doesn't tell us that the damping effect itself is never continuous, but changes in sound as the pressure of the palm on the strings is continually being changed depending the flow of the song.

Take your time when searching for any instruction, whatever kind you are looking for. The Chinese say 'a year spent doing nothing but finding the right instructor is time well spent'. This is a good observation. You might not need to take a year in your quest, but choose with care and side-step all the hype. Don't think that you'll improve in two weeks, take it easy, don't be hard on yourself and above all, savor the music and the journey.




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