Blues you can use- any good?

Thanks everyone for the replies, I think I'll look for a more advanced book. Bends, barre chords, etc. are fairly natural for me now.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the book is too easy. The book pretty much assumes that you know those things going in. I did too but I've found that it's been a nice way to tie lots of things together for me. I'm about half way through so far.

If you can't find it locally to have a look at it then you can browse through some of it on the Blues You Can Use website - http://www.bluesyoucanuse.com/bookbycu.html

Thanks everyone for the replies, I think I'll look for a more advanced book. Bends, barre chords, etc. are fairly natural for me now.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the book is too easy. The book assumes that you know those things going in.

+1

By the time you get halfway through the lessons, they are definitely pushing into the intermediate/advanced area.

I was just squinting at your avatar to see if I could see what you're playing. It look like a better quality 'brother' to the cheapie I'm using at the moment.
Chris

Hi Chris,

The guitar in my avatar is a MIM strat with all single pickups...see below.

You have a humbucker in the neck, but otherwise the guitars are exactly the same color as far as I can tell.

But, I have splurged since on this Carvin CT6M :-)

I also now have an Epi Valve Junior combo that I am using with some pedals...

I've been playing for 45 years...just for curiosity, I ordered the 'Blues You Can Use' book from Amazon just to see what it's all about...it will apparently be here in a day or two.
Perhaps I will find interesting things in it, perhaps not.
I am essentially self-taught, and learned my "up-the-neck" chords by playing full "F" and "Bb" shaped chords (and related minors) using my thumb on the 6th and/or 5th-6th strings instead of barre chording...in the past 20 years or so, I often switched to regular barre chords, but not all the time.
I also use quite a few of what I term "mini-barre" chords, using the first 4 strings to play 6ths and 7ths anywhere on the neck, and playing melody or harmony notes in the 3-4 frets above those "mini-barres".
Same thing with "D" shapes up the neck...they are really handy....little triads that you can ''walk" above with other melody/harmony notes.

The guitar in my avatar is a MIM strat with all single pickups...see below.

You have a humbucker in the neck, but otherwise the guitars are exactly the same color as far as I can tell.

But, I have splurged since on this Carvin CT6M :-)

I also now have an Epi Valve Junior combo that I am using with some pedals...

Thanks for posting the pics Vink. Beautiful looking guitars you have there. They look to be a fairly decent step up in general quality to my guitars. :)

I've got mostly cheapies but I've promised myself that I'll buy something a bit better once I've got the playing skills - and the talent to tell the difference by ear rather than look and price tag. (Or when I weaken and let the GAS get the better of me - whichever comes first! :eek: )

I do have a decent acoustic (a Seagull) so maybe I can use the promise of a good electric as a reward if I complete Blues You Can Use without rushing or fudging it. :wink: :D

I've already got a Vox AD30VT amp (which looks rather like the one in your pic) so I'm headin' in your direction mate.... 8)

Cheers,

Chris

this actually looks pretty cool. I'm going to check it out.

After reviewing the earlier thread from this board on the BYCY series, I went out and got me a copy if the first book and started working through it with my teacher. We just happen to have finished the one book I was working through so the timing was right. Well, I started in it in january and am now up to about the 6th or 7th lesson. I've been doing it at about the one per week pace (skipping weeks for vacation, Mardi Gras, etc, when we didn't do lessons). Today I plan to demonstrate for my teacher the "Delta Blues" and "Bending The Blues" studies.

I had been playing for over two years when I started. Some lessons so far I have breezed through and others were a little more challenging because they did introduce some techniques that were new to me- such as going back and forth between chords and single notes, double stops, etc. Bends I already had down, so a study like "Bending the Blues" came pretty easily. Also, this book was my first real wexposure to moveable 9th chords. In other words, given my level when I started, which i consider as advanced beginner pushing intermediate, I have so far come across some new concepts and some old ones. I am sure that there will be less I already know as I forge ahead. The author mentions in the next lesson that it is the last of the "beginner-intermediate" lessons, and from then on it wioll be "intermediate-advanced".

One thing i do like about this book is that the studies are all nice compositions in thier own right. When you play them you feel like you are really making music. This is opposed to some other books where you just learn an individual phrase or lick which doesn't sound like much all by itself. You actually learn something about composition this way. My teacher is using these studies to point out examples of good composition and soloing.

So, overall, I think this is a great book if you are intersted in blues and at least at an advanced beginner level. I would think that knowing barre chords and having some background in single note playing would be prerequisites.

mike

Great review Mike. I think that's spot on.
I'm not to the advanced beginner stage, so I've been 'stuck' on 'Swinging the Blues' (Lesson 6?) for a month or so.
But 'stuck' implies it's frustrating and it's really not. It's a fun piece, it sounds good played slower, so I'm constantly working at it and making progress.
And they really are blues you can use. I lift little bits out of the lessons I've done all the time when I'm improv-ing.
By far the best book I've ever bought re. learning guitar.

I'm not to the advanced beginner stage, so I've been 'stuck' on 'Swinging the Blues' (Lesson 6?) for a month or so.

Is that the one where you go back and forth between the chords and the single notes? I struggled with that one myself for a whilw. As for improv- sure, i see how you can lift phrases fromthr studies and use them tht way.Ipersonally need to do more work in that area, as I don' tpractice improv thT much.

BTW, yesterday my teacher passed me on "Bending The Blues" but he couldn't quite give me "Delta Mood". Seems I need to get a little more consistent with my right hand accuracy with all of the string skipping in that one. He also said I'm coming along nicely with the 9th chords, andb yesterday we went over the 7#9 chord. Now thatone sounds real nice!

Just got my copy from Amazon this morning.
Looks pretty good, at first glance through, easy to start, but some some surprises further on....will take it slowly through and see what happens. 8)

I'm up to lesson 16 and lemme tell ya, it keeps getting harder and harder :shock:

I'm one of those who will be taking a second tour through the book before I get anything really perfected and up to full speed with any confidence.

I've just begun Lesson 5, Double Stop Stomp, and I'd hate to tell you how long I've had the book. Though there have been a few blocks of time when I was working on other things and neglected BYCU. Even so, the lessons are definitely challenging for me.

Great book, and definitely my favorite.

Margaret

I'm one of those who will be taking a second tour through the book before I get anything really perfected and up to full speed with any confidence.
I've just begun Lesson 5, Double Stop Stomp, and I'd hate to tell you how long I've had the book.

Hey, sounds like we are on the same page, literally and figuratively :-)

I've been working on other things too, and I am just about to start Double Stop Stomp. I am still not happy with my timing on the previous one, and I am only trying to play along with the slow version of that, not the full speed one.

I'm one of those who will be taking a second tour through the book before I get anything really perfected and up to full speed with any confidence.

+ 1 from me too. :)

I've browsed through the first few lessons and most of it looked not too tough. But looking at it and actually doing it properly turned out to be two very different things!! :wink:

Being mostly a rhythm/chord player I thought that I'd find the chords reasonably easy and have to do a lot of work on the 'solo' bits. But so far it's proving to be the other way round! :shock: It's all very well to be able to fast change between a fairly wide range of familiar chords, but when you get a bunch of new chords and unfamiliar changes, then it's back to the fumble-fingered newbie days.... :?

I've already asked my first "dumb newbie" question on JGs forum and got a very quick and helpful response from the author himself, which is a great bonus.

So I've now got the first piece down reasonably well, but got pretty tangled up with the second one. In fact I ended up substituting a simpler chord in one spot and put the tricky one on my 'keep practising' list. Now I'm really enjoying the 3rd piece, which seems fairly easy by comparison. So I'll stay working on all 3 for a while. :)

It's all good, and - yes - I'll also be going through this book a lot more than once I think.

Cheers,

Chris

I'm using a continuous review technique with this book just like I've used on other books. For example, if I'm giving the book a half hour a day and I'm on lesson 6 then I'll put 20 minutes into lesson 6. With the other 10 minutes I'll review one of the older lessons. I might spend a week or two on each lesson when it is the new lesson getting 20 minutes a day. The older review lessons will be cycled through with a new one every day. So on Monday 20 minutes for lesson 6 and then 10 minutes review of lesson 1; Tuesday 20 minutes for lesson 6 and 10 minutes review of lesson 2; etc. When I move on to lesson 7 I add lesson 6 to the review group. After a while I may drop the earliest lessons out of reivew if I feel I know them well enough. However, even doing this I still plan to go back and fully review Blues You Can Use a couple of months after I first complete it.