****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I've been playing guitar for far too long to be as mediocre as I am. I love all kinds of music and I love playing blues in different styles and learning the endless subtleties, nuances and variations on the blues formula.I'm a big fan of Tim Lerch from his youtube videos - he's an incredible, sublime player and an excellent teacher. In this DVD - which appears to be taken from online videos from a defunct website - Tim goes through a number of different blues styles and shows both the rhythm part and a medium length solo in some detail, but not note-for-note. There is a 25 page tab PDF on the DVD which lays everything out for you. He also ends each chapter with an additional solo which is not written out anywhere, and which is much more advanced.I find this approach appealing, and there is a TON of material here for the intermediate or "intermediate plus" player to go through. This is not a hand-holding lesson - there is no "we're going to spend 5 minutes tuning our guitars" part. Tim talks about I-IV-V progressions and other scale degrees and assumes you have some understanding of what he's talking about. He just gets right to it. Some of the material like a basic shuffle rhythm is standard beginner stuff, however the solo he plays - and his philosophies on soloing - are not geared toward a beginner. This is really good stuff if you want to learn some blues which involves taste, tone, phrasing and restraint - although that's not to say that Tim doesn't also dazzle plenty of times with his complex harmony and interesting soloing ideas. One of the chapters even gives you a Lenny Breau-style chord blues, which will keep me busy for awhile.The last thing I want to say is that almost every chapter has that ending solo section which is not transcribed - however you can clearly see what Tim is doing, so with a little effort and time one can figure out some of that more advanced stuff, which is always rewarding.This is an incredibly informative DVD. The rhythm guitar parts may be fairly basic - although I learned something with almost every one - but how to approach solos, how to string licks together, how to approach the harmony of blues guitar - there's a lot to glean from this 90+ minutes. Well worth every penny.
