Bend It With A Great Guitar!

This week I've been going through some Blues instructional videos on soloing. I've been looking at my Guitar World DVD that I mentioned in my last post, as well as the 'Four Note Solo' video by Griff Hamlin. I've also been improvising on a solo in the key of E. The 'Four Note Solo' is very simple, and it can sound great, but the trick to making it sound great is all in the ability to bend notes correctly. In playing Blues, knowing how to bend notes is very important. In my last post, I listed the internet resources I've used, and one of those resources is Justin Sandercoe. He has a great Blues section on his site, and that includes a great video on bending notes properly. I highly recommend this video to anyone wanting to play Blues.

Since I started this blog, I've been using my Ibanez Jet King II guitar. I usually rotate my guitars to give them all more or less equal playing time, and it just so happens that I am using my Jet King at this time. The Jet King is a great guitar, and reasonably priced too. The Jet Kings out now are the Jet King III (JTK30) and IV (JTK40) models. The Jet King III comes with P-90 type pickups and the Jet King IV comes with humbuckers and a 'Vintage Vibrato' (trem). My Jet King came with humbuckers and 'rocker-type' switches to split each pickup, thereby getting single coil tones as well as humbucker tones. It is a very versatile guitar. Want a great guitar with a mahogany body for around $300? Check it out!

After Electrics and Internet...

In my last post, I wrote about the resources I used when I first started learning to play the guitar. In this post, I decided to write about the resources I have used since I bought my first electric guitar. Shortly after buying my first electric (a Harmony Strat-style guitar), I was at a local grocery store looking at the magazine section, when I noticed a booklet-type magazine wrapped up along with a DVD. It was an instructional booklet and DVD from Guitar World Magazine. I bought it and put it in my DVD player when I got home. It was my first ever instructional video and a very good one at that. It was the 'How to Play Blues and Blues Rock Guitar' DVD, with Andy Aledort as the instructor. I still have the DVD, and I still use it. Andy Aledort is a great musician and instructor, and I highly recommend this DVD for anyone interested in learning to play the Blues.

Once I got a good internet connection, I started surfing the web for more guitar lessons. The following is a list of the instructors I have used. I am not including the links to their sites, but anyone interested in these instructors can access their sites using any search engine:

1. Mojo at ThreeChordGuitar

2. Justin Sandercoe at JustinGuitar

3. Josh Cho at CheapGuitarZine

4. Griff Hamlin at BluesGuitarUnleashed

5. Haywyre at LearnBluesLicks

6. Scott Grove at GroovyMusicLessons

All of these guys are excellent instructors. I suggest to anybody interested in learning to play to check out all of these instructors and choose the one (or ones) that they feel will meet their needs. I use all of them. As a side note, I did not list them in any order of preference. I listed them roughly as to when I discovered their sites on the web, with Mojo's site being the first one I started using, and Scott being my latest discovery. One other site that I use, and actually discovered before any of the ones above, is Betty Lou's Site for Guitar Underdogs. This site, unlike the ones above, provides hundreds of song lyrics along with the chord progressions used to play them. In addition to the lyrics and chord progressions, most of the songs on this site have a midi version that people can listen to.

There are so many instructional sites on the web that it is impossible to say there is a 'best' one out there. What might work for some people might not work for others. This post is just my way of pointing people in the direction that has worked for me, so rev up those search engines and have fun learning on-line!

The Beginning...

When I started trying to learn to play, people had no internet to rely on. Either you tried teaching yourself and learning by ear, or you took private lessons, or bought lesson books and tried to follow them. I did a variation of all three. I had a little Magnus organ and the books that came with it. I would play the melody of a song on the organ using the simple 'numbered keys' method the music books offered. My father would also teach me simple songs using the same method. It was here that I noticed the relationship between where the note appeared on the staff and the number of the key above it. This was my foundation for recognizing the different notes. When I got my first guitar lesson book (a Mel Bay one), I was already familiar with notes, so learning to tune a guitar was pretty easy. That first book was a chord book, so I learn some basic chords, even though it was hard for me to form those chords. Later on, I found a Mel Bay book that taught me where the notes were on the fretboard, which I thought was pretty cool!

The lessons I took were through school and college. I took a guitar class for a short time in junior high school, and then I took a music theory course in college. Both of these were extremely helpful. The guitar class helped put together what I had been learning in the Mel Bay books. The music theory course helped me understand music as a whole, regardless of what instrument I was playing or wanted to play. I believe knowing at least the basics of music theory is essential for anybody wanting to play an instrument.

These were the initial steps I took to learn music and to learn to play. I am sharing this hoping it will inspire the total novice out there to take the first steps toward a great hobby (or even more). I hope this will also give ideas to parents out there with little children who show an interest in music.

WELCOME!!!

Welcome to my blog! I'm just a middle-aged guy who's been messing with guitars for a long, long time. This doesn't necessarily mean I am a good player (far from it), but I love to play and more importantly, learn (I am in love with learning). I got my first guitar when I was six, and I've been noodlin', trying to learn how to play, ever since. I got my present acoustic guitar when I was about 12 years old. I played it on and off (mostly off) up until 2007, when I got my first electric guitar. Since then, I've acquired four other modestly-priced electrics (I have no top-of-the-line instruments).

I belong to several guitar forums, so I decided to create this blog as a personal diary of sorts to keep track of my guitar-playing activities and to share what I do to learn to play guitar. To me, it's a never-ending process, but that's what makes it fun! It's all about 'putting a smile on my face' for me, not being a rock star or virtuoso by any means. So, if you're reading this and share my views on playing and learning, stick around and see what happens in this blog!