Blues Grooves for Beginners and Beyond

By Darrin Koltow

Blues Grooves for Beginners and Beyond is a new downloadable ebook that shows you how to play blues shuffles, boogies, riffs and progressions. As you may already know, playing blues rhythms is one of the easiest, quickest ways of getting great, satisfying sounds from your guitar. This guide shows you how to get those sounds. Even if you're just beginning to learn guitar, this guide will take you step by step to playing Blues Grooves.

What specifically does Blues Grooves teach you?

• the basic 12-bar blues
• turnarounds, riffs, and shuffles
• how to create your own Blues Grooves
• how to enhance basic shuffles with harmony notes
• how to jazz up your blues with the dominant 9 sound and appogiatura chords
• open position and movable blues
• how to create riffs using arpeggios, as well as the mixolydian, pentatonic and blues scales

Blues Grooves gives you the theory and the practical knowledge of blues rhythm guitar. Over 70 sound files help you practice with accuracy. If your computer is running Windows*, these sound files are immediately playable from the ebook itself, through hyperlinks. And Power Tab files provide a virtual playalong partner, and a way of customizing lessons to your needs. (Click here to learn more about Power Tab). Blues Grooves shows you how to get some of the most engaging sounds from your guitar, from a style of music that requires relatively little effort to begin learning: the blues.

*Mac users please click here.

What else does Blues Grooves teach you?

• how to play a blues in a minor key
• how to apply the CAGED system so you can play blues in multiple positions on the fretboard
• a variety of strumming patterns
• starter chords to ease you into the full chords
• essential elements of the blues, in chord progressions and within chords themselves

“Blues Grooves changed my life. I discovered how much fun it is to play the blues. My success with this book gave me confidence to tackle other things that looked too hard.”

- Allan Abbott

Blues Grooves has over 200 illustrations, including chord diagrams and rhythm charts that show you how to strum and what to fret. Have a look at the table of contents of Blues Grooves:

Introduction
  Before You Start
  What You'll Learn
  Getting Help
  The Right Hand
  Take Your Time
  Practice Habits
  Use the Music Samples
Reading Chord Diagrams and Tablature
Tablature
Other Things You'll See
Technique
  Right Hand
  Left Hand
Blues Chords and Progressions
  Basic Chords
  The Full Chords
Blues in G
Blues in E
  Ingredients of the Blues
  A New Strum Pattern
Blues in A
More on Seventh Chords
  It's not "Supposed" to be There
Playing Triplets
Portato versus Staccato:
  How to Do it
  The Staccato Blues
Minor Blues
Movable Chords
  Movable Blues
  How to Play (Almost) any Dominant 7 Chord
The Bar Chord
  Origin of this Bar Chord Shape
Rhythm Blanks
Double Bar Chord
  Origin of Double Bar Chord
Combining Chord Forms
Apogee Slide Blues
Minor Movable Blues
More Movable Chords
  The C7 Shape Revisited
  Two More Movables
Movable Dominant Seventh Review
The Dominant 9th
Rhythm Riffs
  Hammers and Pulls
  A Blues Riff
  How Does it Work? A Puzzle
  Arpeggios and the Pentatonic Scale
  The Blues Scale
  The Mixolydian Scale
Basic Shuffle
  How it Works
  The Muffle Shuffle
  Souped up Shuffle
The Backbeat
The Boogie Shuffle
Turnarounds
  The Main Point
  Movable Shuffle
  Adding Harmonic Variety
Conclusion
  Additional Resources
Chord Reference
Notes on the Fretboard
Introduction to Reading Standard Notation
More on MaximumMusician.com

Read what others are saying about Blues Grooves.

How to Get Your Copy

You can try Blues Grooves before you buy it by reading some free sample chapters.

The following link leads to an excerpt of Blues Grooves that shows you many aspects of playing blues rhythm guitar. The excerpt includes many MIDI files to make the concepts easier to understand and to provide a playalong partner.

Click here for the sample. (1.5 Meg WinZip file)

To get the complete Blues Grooves guide, click the "Order here" link. A form will appear to accept your payment of $9.00. You can use any form of payment that's convenient for you. After you place your order, a Web page will present the download link to you.

Your payment is fully refundable if you're not satisfied. Just let me know within 30 days that you want your money back.

The download is a WinZip file of about 2.5 Megs, which contains the MIDI and Power Tab files. The PDF is readable on Windows and Mac desktop and laptop systems. Make sure you have the free Adobe Acrobat reader and WinZip. Get them here:

WinZip evaluation (free) version

Once you've downloaded the file, double click on it, and read the README.txt file for instructions on installation.

Disclaimer

The Blues Grooves MIDI sound files were tested on a number of different systems, including Windows and Macintosh. However, due to the fact that one type of sound card may produce different MIDI sounds from another, it's possible the files will not work as intended on some systems.

Because of this possibility, it's strongly suggested that you first download the free sample document mentioned a few paragraphs ago. This sample has some hyperlinks and sound files. If the sample works acceptably, the complete document will also.

If your computer is running a Macintosh operating system, be aware that the links from the PDF file to the sound files do not work on Macintosh systems. The sound files themselves do work. And the Power Tab files cannot be opened on a Macintosh.

By purchasing Blues Grooves, you are agreeing that you are satisfied with all content — PDF file, sound files, hyperlinks and any other content — as offered in the sample files.

Order here.

If there are problems getting links or sound files to work on your system, I'm available to assist with troubleshooting such problems to a reasonable degree, though I'm not a computer expert.

Contact me, Darrin Koltow, with any questions you have.

I wish you success and enjoyment in learning blues rhythm guitar.

Attention Macintosh Users

If you have a Macintosh, please be aware that you can read the Blues Grooves PDF file on your system. However, at this time, the links from the PDF file to the sound files do not work. The sound files themselves do work.

Also, the Power Tab files are not accessible on Macintosh systems.

Click here to return to what you were reading above.