Jim Kelly's Guitar Workshop - Berklee College of Music Page Three

Still in the styles menu, I choose 'Shuffle Blues' and get a sub menu that offers me 3 choices: INTRO - PLAY - LEARN. Its called "All in Name" and is a Texas Style shuffle in A with a backing track of drums, bass, alto sax and Jim soloing. Jim mixes his metaphors twixt blues and jazz and discusses the extra right hand that this style requires. Also a Tube Screamer is handy. We get 7 minutes of good lesson time: dynamics, muting, thumb attack and general shuffle style tips. He doesn't explain what a shuffle is however or how to count it. 8th note triplets missing the middle note.

I skip over to Lesson one Jazz Blues "Like Kenny" Its the same deal and 7 minute lesson about a 12 bar blues in A minor. He pulls out all the stops with this one and is all over the neck soling and if you don't have some serious guitar study under your fingers there is no way in hell you are going to know what he is doing. Its designed to intimidate and this is the very first lesson. Still its a very nice jazz blues that's is easier than it looks.

Next I go to the Latin number entitled 'Till Tomorrow' where we get 12 minutes. Its melody is composed of two simultaneous note articulations. Non adjacent string Double stop 6th shapes and major and minor third voicings picked with the thumb and second finger. This lesson is quite a piece of advanced harmony and interesting to watch and listen to. He uses all kinds of intervals and briefly touches on his technique. Let me check out the Jim Kelly book I bought. Its in music notation and I don't read music. I guess I could figure it out if I really had to given time. He mentions Mark Nophler's similar style and his technique of finger plucking and plays some Dire Straits sounding passage. Nice.

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