If you have the basic skill level to play guitar, can play bar chords, can keep tempo with a metronome set to 65bpm, know little or nothing about Blues, and want to learn the basics of playing Blues Guitar, then spend a moment of your time and take a peek at a no-frills, straight-to-the-heart, easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, blues guitar website, called “Playing Through the Blues with Griff Hamlin“.

Griff Hamlin has been on the scene for 20 years playing as a professional guitarist, bassist, singer, teacher, and songwriter. He’s studied music at the USC Thornton School of Music, has played on several independent albums and countless demo recording sessions. He has also performed in many different countries around the world including Poland, Korea, Italy, Turkey, and Lithuania, released two 2 blues-rock style cd’s, and is very fluent in many styles of guitar including rock, blues, jazz, country, classical, and flamenco.

In his own personal quest for materials that would help him to grow and expand as a player and teacher, Griff could never find any reasonably-priced lessons or materials that would satisfy or exceed his expectation.

His thirst and passion to keep striving to improve as a player and teacher inspired him to create a unique approach to laying down the foundation of blues, utilizing audio and video over the internet, while systematically layering each lesson upon the previous lesson to give you a basic understanding of the blues over a two to five-week period.

The intent of course is to learn “blues single string theory”, but you have to learn the foundational theory of blues first. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run, you get the picture.

What is most striking, is the simplicity of his lessons. Griff only tackles one or two elements at a time during each lesson thereby making it really easy to assimilate the info. One of the things I really struggled with early in my own playing in regards to blues single string theory, was when to use the minor blues or the major blues scale while soloing. Chapter ten of Griff’s book, goes into this issue and demonstrates it really well. If you haven’t been playing very long, don’t let the content of each page fool you and scare you off; it looks hard, but like I said, Griff Hamiln did a superb job of KISS! (Keeping it simple stupid)

So the question you’re asking yourself, what’s in it? Playing through the Blues comes with a 50 page book choked full of all kinds of useful tips and tricks not only for playing the guitar in general, but covering all the basics to playing blues guitar. Each lesson is accompanied by an audio and/or video file that you download when ready and if you can’t read music, the book includes TAB, but standard notation is also used in all of the examples.

Playing through the Blues also comes with a technology introduction video on how to use the different files and formats, and how to get the best use out of the audio and video available. If you are fairly computer savvy, you probably won’t need it, but for newbie’s, it’s a good place to start.

Also included: Over 65 minutes of solid, broken down blues theory video lessons. 20 bonus “turnarounds” with easy to understand ending licks, 10 jamtracks, including chord charts, and my favorite, “Lessons from the masters”. Griff gives you solos from Eric Clapton, Albert King, and B.B. King, with rhythm tracks to practice, chord charts to see the chord and licks, and video breaking it all down, it’s hard not to like Playing through the Blues with Griff Hamlin.

Just some of what’s covered in this Playing though the Blues course:

• How to solo over the entire fretboard using five patterns
• How to use the blues and pentatonic guitar scales
• How To Use Blues Scales Patterns To Create Solos
• How to understand the chord/scale relationships in the blues
• How to play blues bends, including 1/2 step, whole step, and 1 1/2 step bends
• How to incorporate cool tricks like Hammer-Ons, Pull-Offs, ‘Tweedlies’, into your soloing
• How to use hammer-ons and pull-offs within your solos to increase your speed
• How to pull off pinch harmonics (guitar squeals)

We’ve all seen the traditional blues DVD/Book sets that cost as much as $200! Griff Hamlin gives you everything for the cost of one private guitar lesson, and whenever there are updates to his web site, you have immediate access to all the new material

for life. Pretty haard to beat that!

What I love about the Internet some much is:

• NO wait time for shipping
• NO “please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery.”
• NO shipping costs
• NO possible damage from shipping

Any product worth it’s weight, should include some form of money-back guarantee. Griff Hamlin does just that. Actually he goes against the grain and gives you a 56 day money-back guarantee. Not a 30 or 60 day money-back guarantee, But a 56 money-back guarantee. Why? Because it stands out from among the crowd of products offering the same thing.

56 days stands out loud and clearly letting you know, “if you aren’t happy, or are un-unsatisfied, you have a 56 day money-back guarantee. That’s better then the normal 30 days, and to top it off it’s unconditional! So touch it, play with it, use it, digest it, assimilate it, make it apart of you, and if you’re not 110% happy, do what I would do, get your money back.

Playing Through The Blues by Griff Hamlin will give you all the single string theory fundamentals to Playing Blues Guitar. Today, guitar lessons range from $25.00 to $100.00 per hour. For the price of one private lesson, you can have a life time of access to everything you need to get started Playing Blues Guitar.

So does “Playing Through The Blues” make the grade?

Presentation: A
Material: A
Quality: A
Usability: A
Shipping: A (Download)

Griff did an excellent job of breaking down the blues and organizing it into simple to understand, easy to grasp lessons.

Our recomendation: A Strong Buy