Customer Reviews

Basic Licks and Classic Solos for Electric Blues Guitar

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

First off this is not really for a beginner player. You need to also be pretty familar with the fretboard for one reason. If you want to learn more about playing "orginal blues" for electric this is probably one of the better DVDs around. VEry quality production and Jim is a quality instructor. Goingn Down, St Elmos Blues, Hideaway, and Sugar Cane Blues are the tunes he covers in this dvd. He discusses a few blues scales, blues rythmns as well as some of the classic licks in detail. All these are taught based on their orginal arrangements for the most part. Sugar Cane Blues is Jim's own tune though. If you have been playing electric some already and want to see & hear how to play in the style of Freddie King this may help you out. I woul dnot get this if you are just starting out though on electric in general. Hideaway is a lot harder to do than it looks! Also he demonstrates everything pretty good and then Jim and his backing band let's you play along too.

Instructional guitar DVDs are hard to make, and this one is a lesson in how not to make one. The instructor is awkward and hesitant (it crossed my mind that he was stoned). He throws out bits of useless information ("Stevie Ray Vaughn plays this a lot now, but it's really an old lick"). He plays a lick quickly several times and expects you to magically pick it up. I kept finding myself staring at the TV, thinking his fingers were one string lower than they actually were. An occassional fretboard diagram would be very helpful. There is a booklet of tablature, but it doesn't always seem to match what he's playing. I would expect a DVD with this name to have a few dozen simple, popular blues licks -- alas, no such luck. This DVD goes through a few uninspired blues songs and a few cursory licks, and wraps up.

Pass on this one.