Product Details

• Actors: Jim Weider
• Directors: Happy Traum
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Homespun Tapes
• DVD Release Date: December 1, 2004
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0006ZIEHK
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #255,643 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Here’s a lesson for players who know the basic chords and want to get started playing blues on the electric guitar. Jim Weider takes it from the top, and shows the easy way to get into playing authentic licks, riffs, rhythms and hot solos.

You'll learn how to use slides, string bends, hammer-ons and a variety of vibrato styles for an authentic blues feel, along with rhythm grooves, bass lines and other accompaniment techniques. Learning the pentatonic (5 note) blues scale is the key to blues improvisation, and Jim teaches you how to find the notes you'll need in different positions up and down the guitar fretboard. Before long you'll be playing leads and soloing with the best of them.

Jim teaches the elements of this powerful American style through the classic licks and solos of some of its key players. You'll learn, in detail, how to play tunes such as Albert King's "Going Down," Elmore James' "Elmo's Blues," Freddie King's "Hideaway" and Jim's own "Sugar Cane Blues." He demonstrates the style of the great B. B. King, showing how he gets his distinctive sound, and covers how to get expression on the guitar with the use of volume and tone controls, pickups, pick attack and other essential information. Each tune covers a different aspect of electric blues playing and provides you with a great solo for practicing the techniques you've learned.

The Honky Tonk Gurus, Jim’s recording and touring band, supply plenty of great back-up and help Jim demonstrate how a song should sound when played in performance. This lesson will help novice players become real electric blues musicians in no time!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great electric blues instruction, August 20, 2006

By 

Mark Twain (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Basic Licks and Classic Solos for Electric Blues Guitar (DVD)

Jim Weider covers some classic tunes (Going Down, Hideaway), classic licks, and his own composition to provide a pleasant and lucid lesson on how to play electric blues guitar. Jim has a friendly manner and the excellent screen shots make it easy to see what he's doing. There is also space for the student to play along while Jim and band play back-up. The tab is excellent, thorough, and accurate.

The video covers both rhythm and soloing techniques and pentatonic scales up and down the fretboard. For example, Jim covers the rhythm part to Going Down (done with power chords) and then uses the E pentatonic scale in different positions to show how licks are done in these different positions on the neck. Naturally, he shows you how to play famous blues licks that every electric blues player should know.

Homespuntapes is well known for its quality instructional videos and this is no exception. This is a creative tape with a fine instructor that has good visuals and a good tab book. This is not a beginner's instruction video. If you know how to play rhythm and know your pentatonic scales on the electric guitar you should get a lot of mileage out of Weider's instruction.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Basic Licks and Theory, October 16, 2009

By 

Yardbyrd - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Basic Licks and Classic Solos for Electric Blues Guitar (DVD)

I'm puzzled by the guy that gave this one star. Maybe he is a total beginner. If so, then this might be too tough. Or maybe he was hoping for specific instructions for his own favorite guitar leads. This DVD starts out simply enough with a very (very) basic blues progression, shows its relationship to a fundamental pentatonic blues scale, and then progresses beyond that. The split screen between fretboard and picking hand makes it easy to see what is going on. Jim explains the most basic stuff of electric blues guitar, suggests that the learner "learn it", and then builds on those basics to progress further, step by step. For me anyway, if a person learns the basics and the theory, then they can learn to use their creativity to improvise sensibly, instead of learning to parrot other players note for note. Jim has an easy going, friendly demeanor on this DVD, as well as his other ones, and you feel like you are learning from a friend. I don't see what the point would be trying to "wow" the viewer or show dozens of licks without being in the context of the basic nature of the blues and the chord progressions. If a person wants "quantity", they can find charts and tabs of all kinds of licks for particular songs all over the web. This DVD might not work for everyone, but it will do well for those who want to learn the blues, based on understanding the basics and progressing, rather than simply learning to copy the licks of dozens of players.

4.0 out of 5 stars Definitely an intermediate dvd, September 20, 2006

By 

Everett C. Bennett (Jackson, TN United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Basic Licks and Classic Solos for Electric Blues Guitar (DVD)

This dvd is definitely not for beginners. You need a reasonable knowledge of the fingerboard and pentatonic scales. If you are a beginner, you'd probably be better off starting with some of Happy Traum's blues dvd's. Weider does cover some of the basic blues stuff that every blues player needs but you'd need to be a very determined beginner to do much with the rest. I thought it was excellent, loved the songs he uses. It was all pretty much at my level with some fun challenges. It will help me be a better blues player. On the con side, the material could have been better organized and Weider could have done a better job tying what he was playing at the moment to the tab. All in all, a good teaching dvd.