50 Blues Guitar Licks You Must Know by Jeff McErlain is a new offering from TrueFire.com designed for intermediate to advanced blues guitarists wanting to spice up their vocabulary with some of the tastiest and most traditional phrases in the idiom. The course is available in a variety of formats with prices starting at $19.00.from truefire.com.

Working through the 50 Blues Licks course is a bit like a attending wine-tasting with an expert sommelier. Instructor Jeff McErlain’s hand-picked repertoire of phrases challenges you to break out of that good old minor pentatonic box using techniques such as: tremolo picking, double-stops, sixths, octaves, chromaticism, and diminished lines, and more. It includes not only solo ideas, but grooves, turnarounds, and tasty comping ideas. Although there are some slick licks included, these licks are generally not the flashy technique-oriented phrases but richly expressive musical concepts that will lend a sense of depth and sophistication to your playing.

As Jeff demonstrates each lick he takes time calls attention to the specific nuances that really make the music happen. Details on specifically how to bend, slide, or vibrato are not left to chance. I appreciated this attention to detail, especially as it relates to quarter-step bends. I find that those little in-between bends are often difficult for students to dial in, but usually get glossed over by instructional materials. Here, Jeff does a great job of highlighting exactly when they occur and what they should sound like.

Jeff will often relate a bit of history on how a lick has been used over the years. For example, the very first lick is based on Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone” blues. It’s a groovy riff to be sure, but Jeff reminds us that this riff has been recycled several times to become the basis for “Catfish Blues” and “Voodoo Chile” by Hendrix, “Still Alive and Well” by Johnny Winter, and even a section of “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath. This really gives a sense of the blues as a living music that continues to evolve. I also think it also gives guitarists permission to start creating their own music using the motif as a springboard.

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Jazz Guitar Etudes by Greg Fishman contains 12 jazz etudes and a CD with three practice tracks for each piece: one with the etude played on guitar, another with the etude played on tenor sax, and another with only a rhythm section. The book sells for $19.95.

Jazz Guitar Etudes is the first of two books I’m going to be reviewing that is NOT written by a guitarist. It turns out that Jazz Guitar Etudes was originally written by Chicago-based saxophonist Greg Fishman as a collection of saxophone etudes that has recently been adapted for guitar. Fortunately for us guitarists, Fishman did not simply transpose his sax studies for C instruments and leave it at that. Instead, he brought a guitarist on board. The guitar edition relies heavily on contributions from guitarist Mike Allemana who provides guitar tablature and relevant ideas of fingering and articulation options. The book also contains detailed notes from both Fishman and Allemana on how intermediate, advanced, and professional level students can use the etudes to further their improvisational skills.

Beyond these few pages of text the book gets right down to business with 12 etudes based on a variety of familiar chord progressions including blues, rhythm changes, and the changes to standard tunes such as “Alone Together”, “Body and Soul”, and “Have You Met Miss Jones”. The melodic lines in each etude are fantastic examples of classic bebop phrasing. Fishman makes the etudes thematic to a point, but doesn’t go so far as to make them sound like sound like tunes so much as really well-constructed solos that are hip and fun without ever straying from the underlying harmonies. There was obviously enough thought put into each etude that you could do an analysis of the material identifying common elements in bebop phrasing. However, just playing through the etudes will provide guitar players with a lot of great ideas to add to their vocabulary.

Once players get the etudes under their fingers they can play along with the included CD. Probably the most useful tracks to play along with are the tenor sax tracks. Playing along with Greg on the sax is a really fun and satisfying experience that will challenge your timing, tone, and articulation. Guitarists who are working to get that horn-style phrasing into their playing will especially benefit from this feature and this is the only book on the market that offers this option.

Below are videos of guitarist Mike Allemana demonstrating this feature with the etudes “Halsted Street” and “State Street”:

I really enjoyed working with this book and I hope that Greg Fishman will eventually make some of his other books available for guitarists as well. I think his books Jazz Saxophone Duets and Jazz Phrasing for Beginners would also translate particularly well for guitarists.