AMA Acoustic Blues Guitar Kumlehn Jürgen

One could call the blues the “mother” of popular music. Without him, many styles of music such as B. Jazz, Soul, Rock ’n’ Roll, Funk and Rock did not arise or at least would not exist in the form we know. The steel string acoustic guitar is one of the main instruments in the blues, such as. B. also the harmonica (blues harp) or the banjo. There were and are practical reasons for this: These instruments were transportable and therefore easy for the traveling musicians to take with them. In addition, they were not very expensive at the time and therefore affordable for the poor black population of the United States.

When one speaks of the blues on the acoustic guitar, this usually means the fingerstyle blues, which is plucked with thumb and fingers (picking).

In this book, too, fingerstyle blues takes up most of the space, but I have reserved an extra chapter for blues with a plectrum (flatpick). There are also two chapters dealing with solo and melody playing. This can be done with both fingers and a pick.

A little preview of the game with bottleneck can be found in the last chapter.

After a short historical excursion on the subject of the blues, the practical game begins immediately, starting with elementary playing techniques for independence of thumb and fingers.

The greatest possible rhythmic and tonal independence of thumbs and fingers is the most important foundation in fingerstyle blues, which is why I already mention this point in the foreword. Together with the other components such as the good feeling for triplet rhythms, the mastery of the typical blue chord shapes and the corresponding tone material as well as the various tone shaping options (slide, hammer-on, pull-off, vibrato, bending, release bending), the "Haus des Blues".

All exercises and songs can be found in notation and tablature. Since the “spirit” of the blues cannot really be discovered on paper, a CD is included with the book. It contains ALL exercises and songs - a total of 98 tracks. They are played in with a steel string guitar, always with a count-in beforehand, ideal for playing along.