Along with a brisk trade in sign-ups for Blues In A, I've also heard from a handful of folks with questions about the workshop. As a public service, here are my answers to some of the things people have been asking about this Saturday's class:

1. How is playing blues in A different from playing in E?

Since fingerstyle guitar relies so much on open bass strings and open position playing, every key has its own personality, and its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, in E, it's easy to get around on the E and A chords, because you have open strings in the bass, but the B7 is trickier to find cool licks for, because you're busy holding down a B for the root. In the key of A, it's easy to get around on the A and E chords, but the D7 is more challenging to play licks over if you want to hold down an F# in the bass for that classic Delta blues sound. Meanwhile, once you switch from the key of E to the key of A, the open position shapes for the blues scale all change, too.

Every key has its own sound in open position, its own idiosyncratic voicings, its own characteristic licks. The main point of this workshop is to show you how to create your own improvised solos by taking small blues phrases and developing them into twelve bars' worth of connected ideas. In order to do that, you need both a vocabulary of A blues licks and a framework for how to put them together. As you learn all the classic open-position licks I've tabbed out for this lesson, you'll also gain a deeper familiarity with the overall sound and feel of playing in A.

2. How is this workshop different from the Improvisation workshop back in the fall?

This workshop is also an improvisation workshop, and so we will be talking about some of the same things: how to use the blues form to shape your solos, and how to play phrases and licks that lead from chord to chord. But as I describe above, every key is different for fingerstyle guitar, so we'll be learning a whole different vocabulary of licks and moves. Also, the Improvisation workshop focused on mixing up blues, swing and bebop sounds on the blues in E, while this workshop is focused on making the most of the blues sound in A, through things like call and response, double stops, triplets and doubletime. You'll learn how to get as much music as possible out of the blues scale, while learning a new way to get around the fingerboard and a complete strategy for building your own solos.

3. I'm already signed up for the Fingerstyle Five. Do I still need to register separately for this workshop?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: I initially created these workshops as an alternative for people who were uninterested, for one reason or another, in committing to an ongoing monthly membership, and the workshops cover different ground, in a different way, than what we do in the membership. That said, the workshop and membership material are certainly complementary, and I always see many familiar membership folks among the workshop attendees.

The workshops are more about exploring an essential concept, rather than a specific song. So while we've done a couple of blues tunes in A in the Fingerstyle Five, in this workshop we'll be covering a step-by-step approach to improvising that you can apply to any twelve bar blues.

4. Will this lesson be downloadable?

The workshops continue to be offered as streaming-only events. However, the materials include downloadable PDFs of all the notation/tab from the class, as well as all the slides I present during the workshop. And you'll have unlimited access to the video replay for three months after the workshop itself – plenty of time to review, take notes, mark up the tab, and otherwise take in all the material from the event.

5. How is the workshop organized?

I'll spend the first thirty minutes or so on an overview of the blues form and the five essential kinds of blues phrases, then get into the main material for this class: how to turn individual licks into phrases, how to use those phrases to build four different kinds of blues solos, and how to create more excitement and contrast with triplets, doubletime and call-and-response chord moves. For each kind of phrase, I'll provide several tabbed out examples, and as we go through the different kinds of solos I'll give you complete twelve-bar examples to play as well as specific ideas about how to swap in different licks to start building your own choruses.

I'll spend the last half hour answering questions, going over anything that was unclear, and generally making sure you walk away knowing exactly how to work on the material and apply it to what you can already do in the steady bass style. When we're done, you'll have a whole new vocabulary of A blues licks but, more importantly, you'll also know what to do with them: how to build chorus after chorus of your own solos when you sit down to play.

6. I won't be free at 10:30 a.m. Central this Saturday. Can I still register?

Absolutely. Sign up as if you were going to attend, then just tune in to the replay whenever you have the time. You'll have access to all the same downloads, and the same three months of access to the replay stream.

7. Is registration still open?

I thought you'd never ask. Yes! You can sign up right until the workshop starts, though I recommend not cutting it too close. You can find more details on the workshop, and register, at the link below:

Blues In A

Still have questions? Drop me a line at the email below, and I'll do my best to answer you in a timely and coherent fashion.

More soon,

David