Blog #4: More musings on You-Tube: Slash plays the Blues:
Guns and Roses lead guitar man Slash. Rock and Roll, right?
Those of you who are familiar with how I practice and teach the guitar will know that I think the BEST way to learn and get really fluid on the guitar is to really learn the language of the blues guitar. I was surfing just a little on You-Tube and stumbled on this video. When I watched this video of Guns and Roses axeman Slash ( playing with BB King no less: I’ve seen everything, now ) I was impressed at how it shows that he really knows his blues! Slash is known as a rocker, but it’s clear he cut his teeth on blues. Not only that: he really knows the language awfully well.
Players often say to me: Blues, that’s about a 12- Bar progression and pentatonic scales, right? Well, not really. No . Really Blues is a language all to itself. If you learn this language you will know how to make the guitar speak. Really.
Like BB says in the video, it’s “Mississippi stuff.”
For a great blues lead that’s easy to figure out, check out this video a student posted of me a few years back:
Joe Belmont, Northampton guitar lessons: joe@joebelmont.com