Beyond The Blues

What’s it about?

Beyond the Blues is built around three harmonically interesting tracks that show you how to punctuate your blues with something out of traditional blues concepts.

John delivers a solo for each and then offers up even more ideas in the way of 30 additional licks. Each track is a fertile playground for infusing more and more flavour into your licks.

Features, “Nasty Little Dropout”, “Motorway Moves” and “Break or Build,” all written by Dave Lockwood. Filmed at the JTC studio in North London.

What will I learn?

You will learn how to fluently navigate each track, how to incorporate a number of technical skills and how to seamlessly weave in a number of accessible theoretical concepts.

You will target chord tones, make use of scales in a musical way and improve your ability to stay with the changes.

Balance contrasting approaches and incorporate ideas from across the musical spectrum. Altogether, you will understand how to respect the harmonic content, in a setting that’s more than just a 12-bar blues progression.

What techniques are covered?

In this release, the focus is less on showy technical skills, and more on the approach and articulations that can help your phrasing choices feel both smooth and unique.

• Half step and “big” bends
• Hybrid picking
• Fingerpicking
• Slides

What theory is covered?

Beyond the Blues is packed heavily grounded in easy-to-absorb ideas that are universal in their application.

• Emphasising chord tones
• Pentatonics
• Mixolydian
• Chromatics
• Intervallic approaches

Who is it for?

Play fluently over changes, escape restrictive blues boxes and bind together a range of accessible ideas in a real music context. If you want to go beyond traditional blues, then this is for you.