Essential Techniques
for Blues Guitar

Learn The Techniques Behind The Tone

New gear cannot fix bad technique. If you can't keep strings muted, if your bends are off pitch, and your vibrato is weak, better gear won't make you sound good.

Essential Techniques is the most in-depth series of lessons ever made on this topic. Learning solos is more fun, but improving your technique makes everything you play sound better.

 

Available as individual downloads or DVDs.

The Grip

Watch The Overview Video

The most fundamental part of this style. Used by Hendrix, SRV, KWS, and countless others. You'll learn:

  • Playing chords with The Grip
  • Avoiding muted strings
  • SRV's use of The Grip
  • Exercises to help you master chords with The Grip

Muting

Watch The Overview Video

Part of using The Grip for soloing and rhythm is keeping unplayed strings muted. In this lesson you'll learn:

  • How to target individual strings, muting the rest
  • Which fingers to use for muting
  • Palm-muting and when to use it
  • Troubleshooting muting problems

Raking

Watch The Overview Video

Raking is what makes your playing sound "fat". This lesson combines techniques from The Grip, and Muting, to help you add more raking to your playing. As you learn to apply Raking, you'll learn:

  • A Pride And Joy style rhythm
  • A Lenny style lick
  • A Cold Shot style rhythm
  • and more...

Bending

Watch The Overview Video

Bending is easy to do, but hard to do right. It's easy to spot a player with bad bending technique because they miss target notes, they allow bends to descend unintentionally, and allow errant notes to ring out. In the Bending lesson, you'll learn:

  • 9 Essential Bending Ingredients
  • Which notes to bend
  • Examples of simple and more advanced bends
  • Exercises to improve bending accuracy 

 

Vibrato

Watch The Overview Video

Beautiful vibrato makes your playing sound more like a human voice, but the vibrato motion is not natural, or easy to learn. The vibrato lesson will teach you: 

  • The mechanics of vibrato, how it works
  • 5 different ways of applying vibrato
  • How NOT to use vibrato
  • A few simple exercises to improve your vibrato technique

 

Picking

Watch The Overview Video

Your picking hand is equally important as your fretting hand. At some point, you'll try to play a lick that you simply cannot pick correctly. The Picking lesson will teach you:

  • Different picking styles and when I use them
  • 5 ingredients of your picking technique
  • Key areas to focus on when working on picking technique
  • Exercises to improve picking accuracy, and synchonization