Handful of Riffs

handfulofriffs_400In Art of Acoustic Blues Guitar – Handful of Riffs Woody Mann teaches five repertoire building songs arranged for the intermediate fingerstyle guitarist. Inspired by Woody’s favorite traditional blues tunes, these easy to follow arrangements teach a variety of acoustic blues styles and sounds. Each song spotlights a specific technique for developing fingerpicking skills, rhythmic grooves and dynamics in your playing. Woody illustrates the syncopated fingerpicking of Blind Blake, the single-line style riffs of Lonnie Johnson, the melodic playing in open G tuning of Memphis Minnie, and the unique riffs in standard tuning of Ramblin’ Thomas and Bo Carter. Woody shows how the riffs and techniques can be applied in other songs and illustrates practical ways to create variations within a tune. In this fresh approach to teaching Woody Mann has taken the complex music of the early acoustic guitar innovators and has distilled the sounds into clearly written instrumentals that capture the essence and beauty of the music. Songs: Along the Alley, Minnie’s Spanish Blues, Feeling Bad Blues, New Old Devil, Rambling Blues.

(82 minutes. Includes tab booklet.)

“Woody Mann is a first class guitar player, a first rate performer and a knowledgeable scholar of traditional and vernacular music if there ever was one. His teachers included Reverend Gary Davis early on, and later, the venerable blind pianist Lenny Tristano. So the question naturally arises, what kind of teacher is he? With these three videos, Woody gives us the answer: he is a very good one.” – SING OUT MAGAZINE

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