John Miller To Replace Eric Noden

With the passing of Eric Noden, we are announcing that John Miller will be his replacement. John has produced 28 tutorial videos for the Stefan Grossman Guitar Workshop. Duck Baker wrote for the Guitarist magazine that “John has few peers”. Also, “This is not the boy on the magazine cover but the guy the pros admire and cop licks from”. At Blues Week, John will be offering the following classes:

Play The Song, Not The Arrangement (All Levels)

Rather than learning historic recorded arrangements of songs, we’ll start working on the songs themselves, treating them like blank slates.  Using blues standards like ‘How Long’ and ‘Key To The Highway’, the class work out how to come up with your own personalized versions of them in several different keys.  You’ll see how little it takes to make a strong arrangement of your own, and remember—good is good enough.

Getting Comfortable With Open Tunings (Intermediate/Advanced)

Each class period will deal with a different open tuning. We’ll focus on learning the chord positions you need to play the blues in the different tunings, see where blues sit most comfortably in them and where each tuning particularly shines. The class will discuss how to get into a tuning and back out of them even without a tuner (really!). We’ll be working on Spanish tuning (Open G), Vestapol (Open D), Half-Spanish (DGDGBE), EAEGBE, and Open Bb. Songs will be announced at Blues Week. 

Seconding A Lead Blues Guitar Part (Intermediate/Advanced)

So many times in Blues jams, you have a host of guitars playing out of the same playing position or tuning, all occupying the same musical space. Yet that sound is all but absent from historic recorded blues. This class will focus on strategies for backing a blues that create musical space and help keep the rhythm crisp and clear. We’ll learn the approaches used by such masterful accompanists of the past as Kansas Joe McCoy and Dan Sane. Michael Roach will be accompanying John and there will be lots of playing in this class.