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Book: How To Play Blues Guitar:
The Basics & Beyond
Edited by Richard Johnston, 80 pages (Backbeat Books)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson
If you grew up reading Guitar Player Magazine and faithfully working out the helpful lessons the various columnists provided each month, you know that GP was a treasure trove of musical knowledge for anyone willing to spend the time digging. It was a magazine you could literally spend the whole month absorbing, finishing just in time for the new issue to arrive. A lot of those lessons taught us how to play some tasty blues licks, and some just taught us how to apply other lessons to building our own styles. National Lampoon and Guitar Player. The only two magazines for which I never let my subscriptions lapse.
Richard Johnston, once an editor at Guitar Player and currently editor at Backbeat Books, has gathered some of the best blues lessons from 35 years of Guitar Player Magazine and put them in one place, and in a fairly logical order at that. You don't have to be a GP collector, be nostalgic for the mag or even know what it is to benefit from this book. You don't even have to know who Arlen Roth is to come away from his lesson an improved player. You just need to know how to read music or guitar tabulature. Reading basic tab can be learned in half an hour, so don't let that stop you from missing out on getting tips and lessons from great players.
There's a bonus that comes with this book and it's really worth mentioning. They wanted to provide MP3 clips to demonstrate the lessons so you'd know for sure what you were supposed to be playing. Very helpful. Instead of putting a CD in the book, they included the URL to a guitar-oriented web site called Truefire (www.truefire.com), and a code you enter that unlocks your MP3s. Many MP3s, too, with a lot of valuable "I'll play this slow... now fast... now slow" samples of the lessons to help make sure it sinks in. While you're at Truefire, you immediately notice it's not an average web site. There are all kinds of guitar lessons on it, many by names you know, and yes, they cost something, but most cost very little and some are free. Included with the book is a code that gives you an instant 10 dollar balance with Truefire. Since the book sells at Amazon for under 12 dollars, I'd say that's a significant deal. I, personally, would pay more than 12 bucks for this book alone, but discovering the whole Truefire community, with chat boards, free lessons, seminars, co-op buying of very nifty gadgets and, when I'm ready and feel I have the time, advanced "universities" for various styles of music, has been an incredible and totally unexpected bonus.
As for the book, I remember many of these lessons, and some of them gave me pieces of my guitar vocabulary I use to this day, but working through them again refreshed my memory and showed me what I'd slacked off on. Working on the lessons I'd never seen, especially the more advanced ones, added new chops and reminded me that learning is fun. I'm still working my way through the book, as this isn't a sit-down-and-read-through number. I've skimmed sections dedicated to the instrument itself and setting it up the way you want it, and as I have four basically useless axes getting dusty in a rack, I think I'll be getting into that section next.
© 2003 - DJ Johnson