Review of Jim Bruce's Ragtime and Blues Guitar Picking Course
Learn to Play Finger Style Acoustic Blues Guitar
Something great has happened for anybody wanting to learn how to play acoustic blues guitar. It's called Jim Bruce Ragtime and Blues Guitar Picking Course - From Texas to the Delta. Now there's a mouthful! So what is it?
Well, pretty much as the title says, it's a guitar course for learning how to play ragtime and blues finger style acoustic guitar. Before I go on, let me just say this isn't something for the absolute beginner guitarist. If you aren't yet comfortable or reasonably fluent in playing common chords, then you probably aren't ready for this just yet, unless you are hyper determined!
About the Course
The course is quite straightforward. It jumps straight in and shows you how to play a collection of 40 blues songs from blues guitarists such as Blind Blake, Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy to name but a few. Each of the songs are shown on video (MP4 format), first at normal speed and then broken down into small sections, played slowly. The video also uses split screen for showing the left and right hands independently and displaying on screen Tabs and chord diagrams. All of the songs also come with a printable pdf file with the full guitar Tab.
Although Jim offers a few tips in the videos, you are expected to know certain things like how to read guitar tab and are already familiar with the basic chords. Although this is called a guitar course, just be aware that it isn't a course in the traditional sense; it's more of a jump straight in approach. I personally think this is a good thing because most guitar courses waste half of the time telling you things you should already know.
With that in mind, you aren't going to be given any baby steps in fingerpicking exercises that lead you progressively into more advanced techniques, you're just going to go ahead and learn how to play the songs in any order you like. Ordinarily, I may think this kind of teaching is too fast, however, with fingerpicking the blues I think the hands on approach is better. It's exactly how all the old time blues players learned after all.
Once you have spent the time to learn one song, the right hand adapts very quickly. You'll find it gets much easier the more you do. This is why I think the traditional route of building your technique slowly through a series of boring exercises is not necessary for this style of guitar. The songs themselves are the exercises. You get to kill two birds with one stone and have a lot of fun in the meantime.
Is Ragtime Blues Difficult to Play?
If you have never played any kind of ragtime / blues fingerstyle guitar before then you might be thinking it sounds too difficult. There is a lot going on in this style and you might think it's only for the super advanced guitarist. Don't let that fool you. There's something about the sound of acoustic blues guitar that is very deceiving. Most of these songs aren't as complicated as they sound when you break them down, most of them are well within the capabilities of the average intermediate guitarist who has been playing for maybe six months to a year. If you want to impress your friends (and yourself), this is the stuff to learn!
Full Money Back Guarantee
You don't have anything to lose. Jim's course is available for instant download and if you aren't satisfied then you have the advantage of a 60 day full money back guarantee with no questions asked. At the moment the price is $59 which is a bargain when you think the average guitar DVD tutorial will come with around four to six songs for you to learn at around $30. Jim's blues guitar course gives you 40 songs, which equates to about 4x the teaching for less than twice the price of a typical guitar DVD.
This course is a breath of fresh air when compared to most of the guitar teaching material that you find on the Internet. You know the stuff, promises of secrets and miracle systems that are nothing more than a downloadable e-book - containing the same information you find in any typical teach yourself guitar book available in print, but four times the price!
Jim's finger picking blues lesson are nothing like any of that nonsense. It's as real as it gets, packed with hours of videos that teach you exactly what you need to know and how to do it. That's it. As far as value is concerned, Jim's course gives you everything you pay for and more.
Click here to visit Jim's website