Play Blues Guitar: Beginning Chords, Strums, and Solos: Guitar Book & DVD

The blues has a conversational quality, and this method respects that. You're learning a language with its own grammar (the I-IV-V, the turnaround, the 7th chord flavor), and once you speak it, you can improvise within it. There's swagger here, but it's grounded in technique.

Beginning to intermediate guitarists ready to move beyond open chords into blues harmonic language. This works equally well for students learning blues as a supplement to classical study and for those treating it as their primary genre.

• Spend time with the movable barre chord section before jumping into multiple keys. Confidence with one key's progression transfers directly to transposing.
• The target note method for solos works best when students first listen to Smith's examples, then trace the same notes on their own fretboard before attempting improvisation.
• Separate your practice of shuffle rhythm from blues rhythm deliberately. Play each pattern slowly with the DVD until the groove sits in your body, not just your hands.
• Work the boogie patterns as pure left-hand technique drills before layering right-hand variations. Your students will nail the feel faster this way.

Assign this to ensemble guitarists in the spring semester when ensemble repertoire lightens and students have time for focused skill-building. The DVD structure means students can work independently while you focus on band or choir, then bring their blues vocabulary back to ensemble arrangements that use blues harmonic language.

• Playing 12-bar progressions in major and minor keys
• Using movable barre chords to transpose progressions
• Constructing and executing blues turnarounds
• Differentiating shuffle rhythm from blues rhythm
• Building solos using the target note method
• Applying bluesy dominant 7th chord variations
• Playing boogie patterns with rhythmic precision
• Switching between classic and funky strumming approaches