Turnarounds, Workshops and Imminent Snow
Published: Fri, 02/16/24
From there, I went to the University of New Hampshire, where I reconnected with one of the first musicians I ever met teaching at the National Guitar Workshop and did an evening concert for the guitar department, followed by a master class the next afternoon. All the while, there were predictions about the imminent snowfall, but none of that had made it past the Massachusetts border by the time I was driving back to Boston.
I spent Wednesday at Berklee, where another old Workshop pal of mine is now chair of the guitar department. I did a fingerstyle master class, taught some slide guitar, and met one-on-one with a few students, all of whom seemed extremely focused and motivated, and interested in all the right kinds of things, from the tele-wielding blues student who wanted to know how to improvise on Magic Sam's "Looking Good" to the kid who was trying to figure out how create his own vocabulary out of Elmore James and Duane Allman licks. If the jazz police still roam the halls brandishing superlocrian scales, I didn't see them once.
At some point in the fingerstyle class, we got to talking about turnarounds. Everyone was interested in improvising, and one simple way to get your feet wet with that is to pick a single two-bar section of an eight- or twelve-bar blues and learn a few different licks for that section. Turnarounds are easy to identify and fun to learn, so we took three or four different ones and looked at how to swap them in on the fly on a blues in A.
Now, in case you're thinking "Hey man – I'd like to get a piece of that turnaround action," I've got you covered. Because I also go over some A blues turnarounds in today's Youtube lesson, which you can find at the link below:
Improvising With Turnarounds
Or maybe you're thinking "Hey man – I'd really like to take a live class with you, but I don't go to Berklee. What gives?" Well, if you live anywhere near Austin, I'll be doing an all-day fingerstyle blues workshop on March 2nd at 6 String Ranch right in central Austin. There are still some spots left, and you can get the details and sign up on the following page:
Fingerstyle Blues Intensive – Live Workshop in Austin
More soon,
David