I love that song and a few other things I love include almost anything to do with guitars and a good kitchen party. So with that said here are a few links that I enjoy visiting and you may too.
Here is an interesting articles on guitar setup and maintenance for truly fearless guitar owners. Just saying, you may want to take your guitar to an expert technician.
This one does a better job of adjusting intonation on an acoustic guitar
Lastly a discussion with a tech at Long and McQuade Kanata has indicated intonation on acoustic guitar is more commonly affected by the wood around the saddle giving way – so if you see a bow in the top of your guitar or the saddle is lifting then it would affect intonation. Now you can check this with a piece of paper. Check if you can slip the paper under the saddle. If you can it may be coming loose. That said my best sounding guitar which has minimal intonation problems (less than any of my other guitars) I can slip paper under the saddle, so not sure what to make of that.
Open D tuning ( D A D F♯ A D ) has a wonderful sound to it. It is frequently played with capo on the second fret to get open E (apparently easier on the guitar than tuning open E). Blood on the tracks is probably my favorite Bob Dylan album and I’m pretty sure this is what fueled my fondness of open D. Could be a chicken and an egg thing, really not sure.
So with all that said here are my favorite Bob Dylan tunes to play in Open D tuning.
Boom Boom is just and awesome song by John Lee Hooker. Wikipedia actually refers to it as a blues standard even though it was written in 1961. Now I though something had to be way older than that to be a standard but hey, there is no denying this is one of the most recognizable tunes out there. Here is a link to an early recording of it so you can see how this song sounded.
John Lee Hooker was famous for his presence as he led his group through free flowing blues where he improvised frequently. Boogie Chillin’ and Crawlin’ King Snake come across like this too but Boom Boom, well, it just nails it. Nothing shows this better than his performance in the Blues Brothers movies. I mean check this out:
This rendition is was out there like Thelonious Monk or Miles Davis but blues not jazz. I think this really shows the progression as John Lee Hooker’s style evolved. Now while John Lee Hooker was taking his sound this way many people were recording John Lee Hooker songs in a more commercially appealing way. The best example of this must be In 1965 the Animal’s recorded an initially more commercially successful version of Boom Boom and with their release the song went commercial and is probably the one we all recognize.
I was thrilled to find this awesome lesson online and learn that Boom Boom is surprisingly easy to play. I think it’s a little fast but then it is the Animals version and apparently John Lee Hooker’s original was 168 beats per minute.
Hope you all got a guitar out and enjoyed that. Thanks to Bruce Lindquist for that fun guitar lesson.
Thanks to John Lee Hooker, The Animals and all of you for checking out this post.
Dave Rawlings Machine performances are the type of music that connects with me on very emotional level. Its not the words, though they are excellent, its the purity of the sounds. I guess I just love acoustic instruments pure and simple. Here is an awesome performance to enjoy.
The whole group is so awesome, but I aspire to be a guitar player like Dave Rawlings. To that end I found this video lesson, how to play like Dave Rawlings. I hope you enjoy it.
I took the acoustic challenge a couple years back. I have to say it improved my dexterity and speed but it never translated into music for me. If you’re looking for something to take the boredom out of practicing with a goal to develop technique, speed and dexterity and break through to a new level of playing this is a great site.
It’s been a year since I was a member of JamPlay. The site is packed full of a ton of content. Songs and courses of all sorts. That said there are a ton of songs out there and I struggled to find ones I really felt I wanted learn. The teacher led lessons never worked for me. When you’re learning from a teacher its nice to be able to say this song not that one. You can’t really do that and since I assume the lessons are progressive I found myself learning songs I didn’t want to learn to make progress. I can recommend this site to anyone looking to learn songs and likes the selection of song specific lessons.
I’ll probably be back at some point in time for another year as I’m sure they have added more content but right now I’m taking a different approach. These days I find songs I love and learn them, not songs I can learn to see if I love them.
Jerry’s guitar bar is an awesome collection of song specific lessons. There are even some free ones. The lessons cover strum or picking patterns and seem quite true to the original songs to my ear. The full lessons include a play through the song and tabs. Here is a sample of the lesson part from youtube.
I have to say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every lesson I’ve downloaded from Jerry’s guitar bar. Do yourself a favor and pick up a free lesson and learn a new song. Here is the link: https://www.jerrysguitarbar.com/
If you’re looking to kickback with some fine acoustic blues Jim Brynes may be just what you’re looking for. Here is a fine mellow take on the classic Crossroads Blues
Here is another great cover. Now I love Doc Watson but I just like things a little raw like Jim Brynes does here.
Maybe I like the less polished sound because I can imagine playing it myself. So speaking of playing tunes here is a sort of cool lesson for this song that also provides some useful insight as to what it takes to learn a song like this.
For the love of music!
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