Are you interested in becoming a blues guitarist but have no idea where to start? In this review, I’m going to take a look at the Learn and Master Blues Guitar Spotlight Series, a follow up to the highly popular and successful Learn and Master Guitar course by Legacy Systems. With this course, you will find all the blues guitar lessons and resources you need to learn blues guitar. Does it work? Read on the find out.
With Learn and Master Blues Guitar, you’ll receive a set of 6 DVDs, a Jam Along DVD & CD, 2 bonus interviews with blues guitar legends Jack Pearson and Johnny Hiland, and a downloadable instructional guide. You’ll also receive access to an online forum so you can ask questions and interact with other blues guitar learners. Instructor Steve Krenz was brought back to teach this Learn and Master Blues Guitar course. As a Nashville studio guitarist, Steve has quite a bit of experience teaching blues guitar. A good guitar instructor is probably the most important part of any guitar course, and Steve definitely fits the bill here. His easy to follow teaching style which makes each blues guitar lesson simple to pick up.
As I went through Learn and Master Blues Guitar course, I was very impressed by the quality of the materials. The course covers step-by-step, everything you need to learn blues guitar. Steve first demonstrates a particular topic in detail, and then you’ll have time to practice what he just taught you. As you go through each blues guitar lesson, you’ll find helpful on-screen graphics to aid the learning process. It’s also simple to hop around so you can easily jump to a specific topic or exercise you want to practice. The course starts off with the fundamentals, and you’ll learn the basic notes, chords and forms that make up the blues. Soon though, you’ll be playing fast shuffles, slow 12/8 blues, and “blues in every key”. By the end of the course you’ll have learned many advanced blues guitar techniques and will have the confidence to start exploring the blues guitar on your own.
One of my favorite parts of the Learn and Master Blues Guitar course are the JamPlay DVD and CD. The JamPlay materials enable you to practice your blues guitar playing skills along side a real band. These aren’t some boring guitar tracks either, but a real band with real blues guitar music, featuring the likes of Dino Pastin (keyboard player for Alabama), Chris Tyrrell (drummer for Tim McGraw) and Tony Marvelli. Each of the 22 included tracks highlights a different area of playing the blues. You’ll play blues songs in different keys, styles, and tempos at a varying range of difficulties. This is one of the best ways to practice your new found blues guitar skills and I personally found them to be very fun and enjoyable.
As an added bonus, Learn and Master Blues Guitar also includes interviews with two blues guitar legends, Jack Pearson and Johnny Hiland. In these exclusive interviews, you’ll discover their signature blue guitar techniques that made these two blues legends who they are. Jack covers topics like playing the slide guitar, alternate tunings and has some great advice for beginning blues players. In Johnny’s interview you’ll learn his blues playing approach, bending and other interesting blues techniques. The interviews are a blast and blues enthusiasts will find them to be a great addition to the product.
Still, it’s hard for me to recommend Learn and Master Blues guitar when there are online guitar courses like JamPlay out there. JamPlay has a wider variety of blues guitar lessons available and it features some excellent blues instructors as well.
I also just prefer the online guitar site format over a DVD box set. With JamPlay, the content is always changing and new content is added all the time. With DVDs, you’re basically just stuck with what you have.
So if you really want to learn blues guitar, I’m going to have to recommend JamPlay.
