My free Groove Master Class starts tomorrow!

If you haven't downloaded the tab yet, you can get it here:

Groove Master Class PDF

Over the next five days, I'll be streaming this three-part workshop series live on Youtube:

1. Form & Phrasing Tues, Sept. 17, 3pm CDT
2. Rudiments & Syncopation Thurs. Sept 19, 10:30am CDT
3. Embellishing The Tune Sat. Sept 21, 10:30am CDT

Groove is the essence of how your playing feels. It's important to learn the notes – the cool licks, the important chords, the turnarounds – but none of that matters if the groove is weak. There's good news on the flip side, though: once you do have a great groove, you can make even the simplest things sound really good.

A great groove mostly comes down to playing what you know with more confidence and conviction. And confidence and conviction come primarily from having a better understanding of what you're playing – a song's bass line, melody and chords – and how it all fits together. Far from being some vague abstraction ("you've either got it or ya don't"), groove is something you can work on just like anything else.

So in this workshop series, we'll cover three direct, hands-on tools to help you understand what you're playing, remember what comes next and get your thumb and fingers coordinated. When you can think more musically about what you're doing and trust your hands to do what you need them to, your groove will get better.

The first tool we'll cover is a process I call "The Horizontal 3-Step." Learning fingerstyle guitar often feels like memorizing a series of vertical moves: first you grab this bass note with this melody note, then this chord, then the next pair of bass and melody notes, and so on.

But really, those vertical grips are just the mechanics. What you're really trying to do is express two horizontal ideas at once: a melody, which is unfolding over time, and a bass line, which is unfolding parallel to that melody. 

The better you understand each of those horizontal things – the melody and the bass line – the better you can remember each of them, and the more reliably you can sync them up as the beats go by.

So the first step is to isolate the bass line, and learn to play it on its own. The next step is to isolate the melody, and learn to play that on its own. And finally, the third step is to put them back together, using the bass line as a series of rhythmic signposts to hang the melody on.

I know, it's sounds pretty abstract on paper. So in part one of this workshop series, we'll take apart a classic eight-bar blues, Leroy Carr's "How Long Blues," breaking it down into the bass line and melody just like I describe above, then putting it back together so you can really see how this process works.

To get a jump on things, you can download the tab for tomorrow's lesson at the link below: 

Groove Master Class PDF

In addition to the downloadable tab, I'll have a live chat window going throughout the workshop, so if you've got questions, you can ask me directly as the class unfolds. 

Here's the Youtube link for tomorrow's live stream:

Groove Master Class #1: Form & Phrasing

I hope to see you there! It should be a lot of fun.

More soon,

David