Fred Sokolow is a much sought after LA studio musician who is a multi-instrumentalist. He is at home playing folk, rock or jazz guitar as well as 5 string bluegrass banjo. He is an excellent teacher, and over the years I have asked him to put together various taped guitar lessons to help students interested in many aspects of guitar playing. Only Fred could manage to handle lessons for Beginner's Fingerpicking Guitar and then Electric Blues And Rock Guitar! He approaches all of his lessons with a complete mastery of his own playing techniques as well as how to communicate these to his students. His lessons are informative, exciting and easy to follow.

In this series of lessons, Fred teaches the basic essentials of electric blues guitar styles and illustrates how they are used in contemporary blues, rock and jazz.

For the intermediate guitarist. 92 page tab/music book.

LESSON ONE: BEGINNINGS - THE ROOTS OF ELECTRIC BLUES - Electric blues stylists grew out of the guitar picking of versatile single-string soloists like Lonnie Johnson and Scrapper Blackwell and the country bluesmen, turned electric, like Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker. Fred slows down and analyzes the licks, scales and techniques of these players. Besides learning some great styles, you will have a foundation to build upon. This is where modern blues comes from!

LESSON TWO: ELECTRIC SLIDE GUITAR - Using several sample tunes, Fred teaches how to play electric slide guitar in the styles of the blues masters, the players who inspired Johnny Winter, The Allman Brothers, Ron Wood and the rest of today's rock slide guitarists. Several techniques are covered as you learn the techniques of Tampa Red (open D), Muddy Waters (open G), Elmore James (open E) and Robert Nighthawk (standard tuning) and how to apply these techniques to rock progressions.

LESSON THREE: EARLY BLUES/ROCK: CHUCK BERRY and BO DIDDLEY - These two guitarists defined rock guitar in their day. The licks and styles they used, derived from blues players, are still an important part of every rock guitarist's repertoire. Lots of sample tunes plus lead and backup are included.

LESSON FOUR: KING OF MODERN BLUES: B.B.KING, ALBERT KING, FREDDIE KING and T.BONE WALKER - By analyzing sample tunes, Fred teaches how to play electric single-string blues licks. You will learn several scale positions and how to improvise with them, how to do the "blues vibrato", how to do fill-in licks, chords and turn arounds. Also instruction on how to apply these scales and licks to modern rock.

LESSON FIVE: MODERN ROCK: ENGLISH BLUES and HEAVY METAL - This lesson concentrates on the licks, scales and playing styles of Eric Clapton, Van Halen, Ted Nugent and Jimmy Page - guitarists whose playing directly derives from the blues masters. This lesson includes instruction in effects (distortion, vibrato bar, etc.), blues and sliding scales and a special "speedy licks" exercise.

LESSON SIX: JAZZY ELECTRIC BLUES - Our last lesson in the series illustrates how to jazz up the 12-bar blues progression, how to vary the blues scales with diminished scales á la Charlie Christian, how to apply blues scales to jazz tunes, how to "substitute scales" and the special techniques used by Wes Montgomery and George Benson.

gw 1047   6 audio cassettes only   $49.95