Thursday, January 5, 2012

Using Guitar Tablature - The Best Blues Guitar Lessons

By Jim Bruce


When starting out to search for those ideal guitar lessons, most of us would try the all-powerful 'G', and 'Google it'. Nowadays more searches for all kinds of things are made on Youtube, in fact it's the second most popular search engine after Google itself. Like Google, the number of items shown for a phrase like 'blues guitar lessons' is huge - what is the best way to choose the lessons right for you? Youtube guitar lessons include all kinds of styles and instruction levels, both paid and for free.

Many of the big boys in selling guitar lessons have developed a very slick marketing format that use all kinds of psychological hooks to induce you to purchase. Just a beginner? No problem - you'll be performing like a pro in 3 weeks. Intermediate player? We'll take your playing to the next level. You play very well? This instruction will turn 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 like that, which is pretty hard to resist, it must be admitted. In reality, playing great guitar takes practice, commitment and time. Naturally, the whole process could be made easier with clear teaching and faithful 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 by itself just can't translate that delicate pause, or the thumb strike that is slightly behind the beat when needed to complement the lyrics. Sure, the tablature system can show that a monotonic thumb strike is damped with the hand's palm, but doesn't indicate that the damping movement itself is never constant, but changes in quality as the force of the palm on the strings is continually being varied according to the style of the song.

There's no need to hurry when searching for any instruction, whatever kind you are looking for. The Chinese have a saying 'a year spent doing little else but finding the right teacher is very well spent'. This is a good observation. You might not need to spend a year for your search, but make your choice with care and side-step all the hype. Don't think that you'll improve in two weeks, relax, don't be hard on yourself and first and last, enjoy the music and the travel.




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