This class is not currently being offered in our catalog.
This class is not currently being offered in our catalog.
Spend a day at the Old Town School learning new techniques, tips and rhythms from three seasoned blues artists. Grab your steel string guitar and slide and learn to enhance your playing with personal style. Participants will be assigned to 3 hands-on groups that will each experience the three artists. Students should have some experience with fingerpicking.
PIEDMONT BLUES RIFFS, RHYTHMS & RAGTIME
With Jon Shain
Jon will teach you a variety of bass riffs, turnarounds, rhythmic patterns, songforms and chord progressions that capture the bouncy ragtime influence heard in Piedmont Blues. Jon Shain is a Piedmont Blues fingerpicker and teacher from North Carolina that took 1st place in the 2019 International Blues Challenge Solo/Duo Category in Memphis.
SLIDING TO THE DELTA: BOTTLENECK TECHNIQUE IN OPEN G TUNING
With Donna Herula
Donna will show you how to capture the essence of Mississippi Delta Blues through slide guitar syncopations, dead thumb technique and classic riffs and licks of bluesmen Robert Johnson, Bukka White and Mississippi Fred McDowell. She will also demonstrate how you can achieve a highly rhythmic and percussive Delta Blues sound by using right- and left-hand dampening techniques and simple chords in Open G Tuning. Acoustic Guitar Magazine named Donna one of the Top 10 Up and Coming Resonator Guitar Players.
BIG BILL BROONZY: THE FATHER OF CHICAGO BLUES
With Mark Dvorak
Learn to play guitar like Big Bill Broonzy -- who was known for his strong pulsating bass thumb and melodic lead lines. From country blues, folk, spirituals, and ragtime to a more urban sound – Broonzy played an influential role in post war Chicago Blues and also in the history of the OTSFM. Join Mark, Chicago’s Official Troubadour, as he teaches signature tunes and techniques that make the Broonzy style unique and popular.
