Guitarists spend most of their time on stage playing rhythm guitar. Our role in most band settings, across virtually every genre, is establishing the groove of the songs we’re playing with the drummer and bass player. This is especially true with American roots music like blues, soul, funk, rock and even jazz.

In this hands-on Practice Sessions edition from Scott Sharrard, you’ll focus on developing solid rhythmic approaches for a variety of roots music ranging from the blues to all of the other roots-based genres that we love to play on the guitar.

In previous editions of Reverend Robert Jones’ Blues Traditions series, you studied several influential slide guitar artists such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Elmore James.

In this Slide Roots edition, you’ll dive deeper into the styles of five more influential slide guitar players including Eddie "Son” House, Jr., Booker T. Washington "Bukka” White, Blind Willie Johnson, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Hudson Whittaker aka Tampa Red, and Blind Connie Williams.

In the first section of the course, Reverend Jones guides you through guitar and slide selection, tunings, muting and many of the key techniques necessary for playing authentically in this traditional roots style. In the second section, you’ll play your way through 9 performance studies, each examining the style and techniques of the artists featured in the course.

One of today’s top live performers, Joe Bonamassa, has redefined the blues-rock genre with twenty-four #1 Billboard Blues Albums (more than any other artist in history!) and two Grammy nominations to his credit.

We’re very proud to announce that Joe has chosen TrueFire to collaborate with on the production of his very first series of guitar instructional products.

In this Blues-Rock Masterclass, Joe uses 10 of his songs as the guitar lesson framework for sharing his creative approaches, key influences, and techniques for crafting rhythm guitar parts, improvising solos, performing, and writing songs.