Learning blues

Reznik

Is there a good site or youtube channel or anything specifically focused on teaching blues guitar? I'm not quite a guitar newbie, but I'm not a particularly good player, either. And I don't know any theory, so if the aforementioned blues lessons included some theory, that would be rad.

I fucking love blues, man. Here are some examples of the kind of blues I like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SZIFHJIjEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKOjWDTJ5Ug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-SehqCvzME

Sheep

Scott Grove/groovydjs on YouTube has a bunch of tutorials up.

garroad_ran

Transcription, transcription, transcription. If you want some theory then learn the minor pentatonic scale and the 12 bar blues form, but that's really all there is to it. The blues is about feel, and that means nuance, and that means picking apart the music you like and listening for all the smallest tiny inflections that make every note sound the way it does, and every rhythm feel the way it does.

If you've never transcribed (figured things out by ear) before, it'll take you forever at first, but that's ok. It's far a far superior method to any lessons you'll come across on youtube. One of my favorite teachers ever had a great shirt that he would wear to lessons. It said: Go slow. Go farther.

Also, I'd highly suggest taking some lessons with someone who specializes in that style, but since you're asking for online lessons and such I'm kinda just assuming that that's not up your alley.

Rook

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/BL-000-Blues.php

As always though, the key is practice, practice, practice.

Reznik

Thanks for the tips and the links.

I'd love to take lessons, but my lack of money and terrible location makes that a no-go, at least for now.

Just put on a new set of strings and got a slide, so let's see if I can't get into a good practice routine.

garroad_ran

RE: Lessons- I figured it was something of the sort.

Another point I should make about transcription, that may or may not necessarily be obvious. Transcription teaches you to connect what you are hearing with what you are producing from your instrument. As you improve your transcription skills you not only get to figure songs out faster, but you can improvise or compose that much more quickly because of that skill. Most importantly, it has a major effect on your ability to learn songs quickly and recall them efficiently, because if you can remember what the song sounds like, that ear-fingers connection automatically takes care of whatever the fingers need to do.