Guitar Course

In the first section, Gary passes on 10 of his favorite blues-rock licks to you. You’ll start with the simplest, a Chuck-Berry-type riff, and then move on to more complex material that will help get your speed going and refine your technique.

All of the licks are first demonstrated over jam tracks and then Gary breaks them down emphasizing the key techniques you’ll need command of: Berry Riff, Fourth Riff, King Style Bends, Vibrato Shake, Screamin’ Bends, Sixth & Fourth, Fast Fourths, Rake To The Shake, Up & Back Again, and Steady Trips.

In the second section, Gary steps you through 11 key concepts and approaches that you can employ to power your rhythm, improvisations, and blues-rock tone: Vibrato & Bending, Pinch & Tap Harmonics, Trill Drill, May The 4th’s Be With You, Picking Exercises, Other Right Hand Techniques, Timing & Phrasing, Hit The Sweet Notes, Finding & Targeting Notes, Chord & Scale Relationships, and Eb Tuning.

Watch the Pinch & Tap Harmonics sample lesson video below.

“Boot Mill Blues is one of my tunes — a really fun boogie-woogie á la Brian Setzer, pedal to the metal, four on the floor kind of tune. For the rhythm performance, I dropped my low string to match the D string, for that open D sound. We’ll also work through a lead performance where we’ll use double-stops in the pentatonic scale, mixing a little bit of the minor and major, and go for a harmonica type sound.

I had James Montgomery playing harmonica on this song, and he said we needed a riff in the beginning, so I made something that has a harmonica type feel to it in the phrasing. When playing these double-stops, slide into them to get the harmonica feel going.”

“Boss You Around is from my album, Déja Blues. This is a fun Texas shuffle with a really cool swing feel. This performance study is going to include both the rhythm riff and the lead fills as one complete performance. We’ll be in the key of A here, but don’t forget that we’re still tuned down to E♭.”

“We’re still a half-step down with our tuning for this tune in C# minor, which has a funky, almost Latin feel, with a lot of atmospheric sound and space between the phrases.

We’ll utilize our 4th intervals again here, looking for the targeting note of the I, IV, and V chords. We’re using a lot of space in the phrasing with reverb and delay to give it some ambience. As the chords are changing, I’m trying to hit the target notes of the I, IV, and V chords.”

“Déja Blues is the title track of my album, Déja Blues, and it has a great, haunting melody. It’s in D minor, tuned down a half-step again, using a phaser, reverb, and some delay to give me my guitar tone. We’re going to play a bridge melody that sounds a little like something Jeff Beck would play, and I’ll show you a couple chord voicings that you haven’t played before as well.

For the soloing parts, we’re using the D minor pentatonic, some 4th intervals, triplets, and heavily utilizing our vibrato and bending techniques to draw out the atmospheric qualities of the notes.”