Get fluent improvising steady-bass blues in the key of A! In this two-hour workshop you'll learn how to:

  • Build a vocabulary of blues-based open position licks for every bar of the chord progression
  • Mix and match your new vocabulary to create an endless flow of variations
  • Create compelling, musical solos with direction and momentum.
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How Do You Put Together Solos That Work?

If you've spent any time improvising, you know that just playing the right scale at the right time isn't enough. Whether you're using one position of the minor pentatonic scale or modes all over the neck, it's easy to feel like you're picking out scale tones but hard to sound like you're really playing something musical. Throw in the fingerstyle issue of doing all that while keeping the groove going with your thumb, and you've got a serious challenge on your hands.

HAVE A PLAN

It seems like you should just be able to sit down and wing it. Isn't that the whole meaning of improvisation? It turns out improvising is a musical proposition just like writing a song or or anything else creative: if you want it to hang together, make sense, and not just meander, that's going to take some planning. The good news is, there's a middle ground between playing a bunch of memorized music, and completely guessing when you sit down to play. Great solos often follow the same kinds of rules as great melodies: they're built out of short phrases, those phrases have some kind of connection with each other, and the chord progression itself provides a kind of roadmap for how to string those phrases together.

USE THE FORM OF THE TUNE

The overall number of bars in a tune's progression, and the way those bars naturally divide into smaller groups of two, four or eight bars, make up the form of the tune. A twelve-bar blues is itself a kind of form, and within those twelve bars, there are three lines of four bars each. Just thinking about the lyrics to a typical twelve-bar blues, you can further identify those three four-bar sections as forming an AAB structure: the opening line ("Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin' me too"), which gets repeated for the second A ("Yes, nobody, nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin' too") before reaching B, the third line, or the answer to the first two A's ("Now you see why I act so funny, when you do the things you do").

CREATE MOMENTUM WITH BLUES LICKS THAT RESOLVE

Not only does dividing up the form into smaller sections make it more manageable and relate it to how lyrics build within a verse, it also helps you think about your phrasing – the rhythmic shape of each lick you play and how it relates to where you are in the progression. By building a vocabulary of licks that land in the right places, you can go from feeling chased around the room by the chord progression to playing solos that lead the listener through the form with a sense of momentum and inevitability.

Once You Have The Big Picture, Add Cool Details

The first step is to create simple, musical sounding solos using these basic building blocks of form, phrasing, and the blues scale. Even within the twelve bar blues, using just three or four kinds of phrasing and one scale, you can make a lot of cool music. But even better, once you have a grip on form and phrasing, you can do even more within those guidelines.

HAVE MORE THAN ONE WAY TO PLAY THROUGH THE PROGRESSION

We'll start with one specific way to play through the form – the Lyric Form, or soloing based on the phrasing of classic vocal tunes like "Every Day I Have The Blues" and "Sweet Home Chicago." Then we'll build on that by creating longer phrases that still lead you through the progression, and answer them with chord hits and double-stop responses. I'll illustrate every step with specific examples, complete fingerstyle blues licks you can add to your vocabulary of moves. And I'll show you how each lick fits into the complete blues progression, so you understand exactly how to use it in your own solos.

MIX UP YOUR RHYTHMS – EIGHTH NOTES, TRIPLETS AND DOUBLETIME

In addition to the lyric form, we'll look how to create contrast with different kinds of phrasing and using different rhythms. We'll use triplets and doubletime to built up the energy and momentum and to wring the most impact out of the seemingly innocuous open position blues scale. Again, in addition to showing you specific licks, I'll explain how they're put together and where they belong in the form so you understand how to start constructing your own triplet and double time figures, too.

SPELL OUT THE CHANGES WITH MAJOR THIRDS AND CHROMATIC LICKS

Finally, one of the most expressive tools in the blues is creating contrast between the blues scale and "playing the changes." While we'll be sticking pretty close to I, IV and V and the blues scale in this workshop, we will take a look how to use the major third, especially on the I and the V chord, to really make certain licks pop and give your solos an extra kick, especially on double time licks and the turnaround.

Expand Your Fingerstyle Blues

Coming up with and developing your own ideas is at the heart of blues improvisation. At the conclusion of this workshop, you'll have four specific strategies for playing through the twelve bar blues form, a whole collection of new blues licks to work on, and a roadmap for how to combine everything you've learned into a series of compelling, musical solos in the steady bass style. I'll go through every example on camera, pointing out essential left- and right-hand techniques, explaining why each idea and phrase works the way it does, and suggesting plenty of additional ways to vary and develop the material from the class.

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Why a live workshop? How does it work?

I've been doing in depth live streams for the past eighteen months as part of my monthly membership, The Fingerstyle Five, and on my Youtube channel. Since  my first weekend Workshop in November, I've had numerous requests for a class on how to play the blues in A. The live stream format combines a concentrated amount of material on a specific topic with an interactive, Q&A environment that lets you get your specific questions answered while the workshop is still going on. Before this workshop starts, you'll have a PDF with notation and tab of each example I'm going to teach, so you can focus on watching and learning, knowing the note-for-note specifics are already in your hands. The whole two hours will be archived for later replay, so you'll be able to watch anything you want again for the next three months. And I'll pause at regular intervals to take questions via chat, to clear up aspects of the material that are still unclear.

Yes, you can sign up just to watch the replay  later

If you can't be there Saturday morning but still want to learn from this workshop, just register as if you'd be attending live, and catch the replay later, whenever it's most convenient for you.

Join The Interactive Live Stream This Saturday

Blues In A is a two-hour live-online workshop being streamed this Saturday, April 17th at 10:30AM CST. Registration is $47 and the workshop will include:

  • Two hours of live-streamed online instruction
  • Downloadable notation and tab of all twelve exercises
  • Live chat – ask David your questions as we work through the material
  • Access to re-watch the archived live stream for the next three months
Click Here To Register

Ready to get playing?

Fingerstyle Blues Vocabulary In E is available now for $37 and includes:

  • Twelve in-depth lessons totaling over two hours of video instruction
  • Line-by-line walkthroughs of every solo
  • Clear, accurate downloadable PDFs with notation and tab for all six solos
  • Downloadable videos for every lesson
  • Unlimited streaming of every lesson
Click here to get started!

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