Bob Brozman

Sliding Rhythmic Delta and Beyond

World Music Workout

This class is a rhythm, open tunings, improvisation and expression workout focusing on making you a stronger musician both rhythmically and harmonically and expanding your ears so you can more quickly learn new improvising skills for many kinds of music.  Beginning with the concepts and sound of deep Delta blues roots (Charley Patton, for example) we’ll gain deep understanding of how ALL open tunings work, giving you new easy ways to improvise solos and create interesting accompaniments. Open to intermediate players Bob will teach how to get a good tone with a slide and illustrate advanced techniques applied to improvisation. Set sail for adventure!

Country Blues Obscurities
 

Mississippi Sounds

Piedmont Blues and Beyond

Jorma Kaukonen

Intermediate Fingerstyle - 1-day Guest Workshop

Interpreting Rev. Gary Davis - 1-day Guest Workshop

Jorma will be passing on his interpretation of the music of the Rev Gary Davis. Students will learn runs, chord shapes, bass runs, right hand picking, rhythm figures, back picking , double-time patterns, vibrato, string bends and much more. He will focus on one or two songs at the most and expect that students are at an intermediate level of guitar playing.

Steve James

Roots and Blues Guitar

Ragtime Blues Repertoire

This class presents early minimalist pre blues, hillbilly music, and country blues as well as the more complex harmonic and rhythmic elements of ragtime blues and bottleneck styles. Such early American roots players as Jelly Roll Morton, Sam McGee, Furry Lewis, and Mance Lipscomb will be covered. Steve will reach several picking techniques, how to use chord inversion, open tunings and the effective use of the slide. This is class for students to improve their fingerpicking and slide skills while broadening their repertoire.

Ragtime is one of the most exciting styles of country blues guitar playing. In this class Steve will demonstrate and teach the sounds and songs of the masters and will focus on how to develop a syncopated and swinging picking style. He will teach ways to get the texture and groove of the music.  Some of the artists that will be spotlighted will be Blind Blake, Big Bill Bronzy, Sam McGee, Memphis Minnie,  This is a class for people who are comfortable with basic alternating picking.

Basic Bottleneck Blues 
 (Toolbox Class)

Lap Style Playing

Orville will spend the first few days working on tone, accuracy, and fluidity of sound in standard tuning.  Students will learn how to coordinate playing slide with basic picking ideas.  Examples will include the playing styles and repertoire of Earl Hooker and Muddy Waters. Later in the week the class will progress into open G and D tunings and will explore the works of Blind Willie Johnson, Tampa Red, and Fred McDowell.

The emphasis of this class will be on building a basic technique with good intonation and tone. Repertoire will include traditional blues by Oscar Woods, Casey Bill Weldon and other early blues players. This class will also look at how the blues style was adapted and developed by the bluegrass tradition with examples from the playing of Josh Graves. No previous experience in lap playing is necessary to take this class.
 

Fingerstyle Innovators

Blues to Jazz --The Logical Fretboard

The guitar of Joseph Spence, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bo Carter and others.

Learn the idiosyncratic style of Joseph Spence, the great Bahamian guitarist.  Learn his trademark riffs, intros, arranging style, and how he created his special rhythmic style.  Songs taught will include Coming In On A Wing and Prayer, Face to Face That I Shall Know Him, & There Will Be A Happy Meeting in Glory.

Blind Lemon's unique approach to fingerpicking including his back-picking bass patterns will be discussed and demonstrated. Songs by Blind Lemon Jefferson in standard tuning may include He Arose From the Dead, Hot Dogs, and Black Horse Blues.

Trevor may also cover material from the repertoire of such players as Bo Carter, Rev. Gary Davis, and others.

Drawing on the music of Lonnie Johnson, Trevor will present examples of how to use basic chord shapes to create riffs and solos.  Then moving on to the music of Charlie Christian, the similarities between blues and jazz riffs will be demonstrated.  Basic jazz chords and how to learn to construct them logically, instead of relying on memorization will be covered.  After learning several one and two-bar Charlie Christian phrases, the class will learn tunes that the material can be applied to.  Students will also learn how to read a lead-sheet.
 

Bottleneck Blues Repertoire

Swing Guitar Basics

This class will teach several bottleneck guitar songs, both within the blues tradition and from Mike’s own imaginative repertoire. The emphasis will be on tone, syncopation, and incorporating slide with melody playing and alternating picking ideas. Working in Open D and G, the class will cover fretted chord forms, turnarounds, and picking patterns to keep it all moving along. Students should be able to play a basic alternating bass fingerpicking pattern.
 

This class will introduce the basics of swing guitar. Starting with getting the relaxed groove of swing rhythm, which involves the use of some great new closed-position chords, Mike will teach classic swing tunes that illustrate how the style works. Some theory will be applied towards gaining an understanding of transposing, reading a swing chord chart and the songs structure of tunes types commonly found in swing. 
 

Fingerstyle Arranging Basics
(toolbox class)

Songs From the Traditions - folk and blues

Early Jazz Fingerstyle

Duets

Early Jazz Fingerstyle will focus on fingerstyle guitar adaptations of classic ragtime pieces and jazz tunes from the 20’s and 30’s. Beginning with simple arrangements played with an  alternating bass line and syncopated melody, the repertoire will illustrate classic arranging techniques including moving bass lines,  chord embellishments, the use of open strings in combination with high fretted notes, ragtime turnarounds and how to start using these as a basis for adding some improvisational licks and ideas. The music will include compositions by Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt.

This class will focus on creating duet arrangements in which each guitar part is technically and musically equal. Rather than the lead and rhythm guitar approach, these arrangements of ragtime and early jazz tunes intertwine to form classic duets. Lasse will illustrate arranging techniques such as playing melody and bass in a call and response fashion, expanding the harmonic possibilities of a tune and concepts of lead guitar and back-up playing basslines.
 

Swing Chord Melody

Swinging Rhythm 

class description posted soon

class description posted soon

Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar
(toolbox class)

Slide and Blues Basics
(toolbox Class)

This class is an intro to fingerstyle playing, starting at the very beginning. It is designed for students who have little or no experience playing fingerstyle or acoustic blues guitar.  “dead-thumb bass” and alternating bass styles will be covered as well as accompaniment ideas.  The emphasis on techniques and repertoire, will give the beginning student the tools needed to gain a basic understanding of fingerstyle guitar from which to build on.

This class is designed for beginning and intermediate guitarists who are just getting started with slide and blues playing. The focus of this class is on slide guitar using open tunings and standard tuning with the emphasis on integrating slide playing with fingerstyle techniques. The basics of developing a good tone and precision will be covered. Students will learn how to play several standard tuning blues songs in the keys of E, A, G and C with the basic chords common to many blues songs. Students will also learn how to incorporate the classic turnarounds and blues licks into the standard 12-bar form that is at the core of the blues style.

Jennifer Scott

Vocal Technique  
description posted soon

Rene Worst

Beginning Bass
description posted soon

Robert Tilling

Guitar / Harmonica / Performing basics
 

Don Sternecker
 

Art of Home Recording - 2 day workshop

Banning Eyre
 

African Guitar - 2 day workshop

description posted soon