Fingerstyle Blues Vocabulary in E

So, this course is literally all about playing the blues in E. I know, I know – there are other keys, there are other grooves. But really, come on – I know when I'm just sitting around picking, this is the kind of stuff I want to play. Steady bass fingerstyle blues in E leaves you free to improvise blues licks in the open position, to find cool chord voicings up the neck, to mix jazzier chord substitutions in with the more traditional V-IV-I turnaround...really, it's some of the most fun you can have playing the guitar.

So that's what you'll be working on if you take this course. Specifically, I'll be covering:

• creating a solid groove
• double stops and triplet licks
• how to find and connect 7th chords up the neck
• 9th and 6th chord voicings
• jazz-inflected ways to the play the turnaround
• jazz and swing chord substitutions.

These lessons are cumulative, which means as you're learning new licks, you'll be seeing how they fit into the groove; as you learn new chords, you'll find out how to use them to answer those licks, and as you learn new turnarounds and chord substitutions you'll understand how to integrate them into the more traditional blues chord progression you're already familiar with.

For each topic, I'll spend one lesson showing you a handful of new moves and ideas, then follow that with a lesson in which I teach you a twelve-bar solo featuring those moves and ideas. Below is a complete list of lesson topics:

01 THE GROOVE 

02 LICKS

03 UP THE NECK

04 MORE CHORDS

05 THE TURNAROUND

06 BLUES CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS

 If you want to kick the tires, I've included the fourth solo lesson from the course, "More Chords." You can hear me play the solo up to tempo at the beginning, then watch me break the solo down line by line as I take you through all twelve bars in detail so you don't miss a single move.

Note: there is tab for the "B" lessons (the solos) but not for the "A" lessons (ideas and moves). In the past, students of other courses of mine and I have discovered that while the process is a little steeper without tab at first, the payoff in how well they ultimately retain and assimilate the material is well worth the effort. So that's the approach when working through the short examples and chord voicings in the "A" lessons. Since the solos (in the "B" lessons) are so much longer and involve so much sequential information, I have included the tab for those.