Hello Friends,

We are revisiting my Blues a Rama lesson in the weeks to come here. When I recorded this track for the album "Guitar Groove a Rama" it was an afterthought after all the tracks were finished and ready to mix. This piece is something I occasionally pulled out when the mood hit me on stage. It would be years in between performances of it and I had to be pretty wound up to play it. So after we finished the album tracks I thought, maybe we should go back in and cut this just for the hell of it seeing guitar was the album focus. So we went down in my basement studio and talked out the form. Once we had mapped out who and what went where, we gave it a shot. From the first section in E of the Muddy Waters style to the Guitar Slim section I had to quickly put a capo on the first fret without losing a beat, then take it off just as fast. There were two false starts because of the capo maneuver but on the third try we made it all the way through without a single issue. It's a good thing because I couldn't have done multiple takes of it. It's, as you can imagine, a physically and mentally draining task to perform it. So the first section is Muddy Waters style. Not a particular song per se but and example of some of the style that Muddy and Jimmy Rogers played in their early days playing together in Chicago. I'm playing with my fingers and no pick here and combining double stops with bends, single note runs, chords and bass lines in between. Basically I'm playing as if I'm accompanying myself with no other instruments. That is what Muddy's style of guitar mostly is. The same goes Jimmy Rogers also. Together they made the perfect 2 guitar team. I will post some videos that demonstrate this style.

Enjoy,

Duke

 

 

Topics and/or subjects covered in this lesson:
Blues