free jam tracks - brought to you by nick cresswell

Music Videos 06

Stefan Grossman - "Slow Blues in E"

Stefan Grossman's instructional material is some of the best out there for many traditional styles of music. Blues, folk, country and so on. Definitely worth checking out if you want to improve your playing. You can find DVDs, books and more on many styles of blues.

Open Your Ears - Mozambique - Nwalhulwana

Open your ears! This is an amazing piece of music, great acoustic guitar and vocals which just goes to show that music transcends anything and everything that can be put to words. It's all about sounds. Music is about sounds. I don't know what is being said in this piece of music. They lyrics could be about anything. In theory they could be ugly - but you know by the sounds that they are of beauty - something filled of life, love and happiness. Don't forget the bottom line, we are dealing with sounds, if they come from the heart then you can do no wrong. And that's, the Real Deal.

Crossroads Guitar Duel

This has to be the greatest moment in cinema history. If you haven't seen the movie Crossroads you should go hire or buy it. The whole film is pretty cool but the guitar duel at the end of the movie (shown above) will blow you away. Steve Vai is playing his parts and Ralph Macchio guitar parts were played by the great Ry Cooder. They had the awesome guitarist and music educator Arlen Roth on site when they made the film to help Ralph out with his guitar playing. Great movie with great playing all the way through it - go check it out.

Blues Guitar Lesson - The Land of A7

This is a really good instructional clip put up by a good guitar player and teacher. Great for electric and acoustic guitar players. Watch the entire clip and play through the shapes he shows you and you'll walk away being able to add some really nice color to a blues progression. Basically what he's doing is harmonizing the blues scale by playing notes that fit well with the A7 chord all up the neck. If you want to take this to the next level you should learn how to do the same thing using an E7 chord. Then you could plan an E blues using the concept with the E7 and A7 chords (the I and the IV chords). It's a little bit of work but will make you sound like a real pro. More importantly you'll enjoy your guitar playing a whole lot more than if you only know the basic shapes. Highly recommended.