GGW051 - Grossman Guitar Workshop - The Guitar of Robert Johnson

Code : GGW051

Isi : 3 DVD

Description

"Tom Feldmann is an instrumentalist of the first degree, renowned among guitarists as an instructor and preservationist. No one can teach Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James or Bukka White better than Feldmann, a master fingerpicker and slide guitarist." – Living Blues 

"Robert Johnson is the most important blues musician who ever lived. I have never found anything more deeply soulful. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice." - Eric Clapton

"Robert Johnson's music sent me reeling. I couldn't even imagine how someone could play the guitar the way he did and sing at the same time." - Bonnie Raitt

Robert Johnson is arguably the most well known figure in the history of the blues. Though the 29 songs Johnson recorded from 1936-1937 had little impact during his lifetime, a collection of his singles, entitled King of the Delta Blues Singers was released in 1961 and found widespread recognition. Then, 30 years later, The Complete Recordings of Robert Johnson was released selling over one million copies. The first blues recording to do so, winning a Grammy in the process.

Since that 1961 LP, players from all different musical backgrounds have sought to learn Robert Johnson's techniques and in this 3 DVD set, with over 5 hours and 52 minutes of instruction, Tom Feldmann covers every aspect of Johnson's playing. Each song is performed by Feldmann before he dissects the arrangement verse-by-verse and ends with a split screen segment where the song is played slowly with close up shots of both the left and right hands. This is the most expansive look into the guitar playing of Robert Johnson produced in video form.

DVD ONE: STANDARD TUNING: Kind Hearted Woman, Phonograph Blues, 32-20 Blues, A Blues Variations (Dead Shrimp Blues, Little Queen of Spades, Honeymoon Blues), I'm a Steady Rolling Man, Sweet Home Chicago, Love In Vain, From Four 'Til Late DROP D TUNING: Malted Milk CROSS NOTE TUNING: Hellhound on my Trail

DVD TWO: SPANISH TUNING: Stop Breakin' Down Blues, Walking Blues, Come On In My Kitchen, Last Fair Deal Gone Down, Stones In My Passway with Variations for Terraplane Blues and Milkcow Blues, Cross Road Blues, Traveling Riverside Blues

DVD THREE: SPANISH TUNING: If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, VESTAPOL TUNING (OPEN E TUNING): Rambling on my Mind, I Believe I'll Dust My Broom, Preaching Blues, STANDARD TUNING: They're Red Hot

352 minutes - Level 3 - Detailed tab/music booklet PDF file included on each DVD

Review: Over the intervening decades since Robert Johnson cut his 29 monolithic sides in 1936 and 1937, countless manhours have been spent by countless guitarists hunched over spinning 78s, then LPs, then CDs, and now spinless MP3s, desperately trying to latch onto the mystical powers inherent in those songs - in that sound - which launched as many legions of rockers as of bluesmen. With Johnson's direct apostles below ground - Robert Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards, Johnny Shines (who thrice returns, via bonus performance footage) - Tom Feldmann is your best possible instructor. The country blues junkie has put in those countless hours intensively detailing everything from the lemon squeezing "Traveling Riverside Blues" to the tamale-peddling "They're Red Hot" - so that you don't have to. He's got the complete canon down cold (come on, both takes of "Cross Road Blues" get dissected here). Right down to that spine-tingling 'howling wind' slide lick dripping down "Come On in My Kitchen." Even down to that momentary flash of wickedness in the fourth verse of "Walking Blues" when string bends actually snap. With calm coaching, you'll run the existential table from the Son House knockoff of "Preaching Blues" to "Hellhound on My Trail," with a "Malted Milk" break in between. Besides using the slo-mo split-screen, Feldmann makes learning easier by wisely corralling similar pieces, as when taking advantage of the structural relationship between "Terraplane Blues" and "Milkcow's Calf Blues" with "Stones in My Passway." Tremendous clout resides within three how-to DVDs, for herein lie both the kindling and the spark which lit the firestorm of modern blues and rock. So the calculus is simple: Six hours of one-on-one Robert Johnson instruction equals essential. - Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag 

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GGW050 - The Guitar of Son House

Code : GGW050

Isi : 2 DVD

Description

"Tom Feldmann is an instrumentalist of the first degree, renowned among guitarists as an instructor and preservationist. No one can teach Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James or Bukka White better than Feldmann, a master fingerpicker and slide guitarist." – Living Blues 

"It is difficult to describe the transformation that took place as this smiling, friendly man hunched over his guitar and launched himself, bodily it seemed, into his music. The blues possessed him like a 'lowdown shaking chill' and the spellbound audience saw the very incarnation of the blues as, head thrown back, he hollered and groaned the disturbing lyrics and flailed the guitar, snapping the strings back against the fingerboard to accentuate the agonized rhythm. Son's music is the centre of the blues experience and when he performs it is a corporeal thing, audience and singer become as one." - Bob Groom/Blues World

"In the years before World War II, Son House created some of the purest, most powerful Mississippi Delta blues on record. Playing with partners Charley Patton and Willie Brown, he exerted a profound influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, both of whom copied his music and carried it to new generations. House's influence still echoes through the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and many other musicians, and in many respects, he is the true father of what's known today as deep blues."- Jas Obrecht

In this lesson Tom Feldmann takes you step by step through 15 classic Son House tunes that span every phase of Son's recorded career. This 4 hour lesson is undoubtedly the most extensive look into the music of Son House and the techniques he developed. DISC ONE highlights 8 songs in Spanish tuning. While DISC TWO focuses on 7 songs using the Vestapol tuning (Open D), Standard, and most surprising to students of House's playing, Cross-Note tuning with Clarksdale Moan. 

Also included on DISC TWO is a bonus interview with Stefan Grossman where he talks extensively about meeting Son House and recording with him. Rare performances of Son House following his rediscovery are used throughout the lesson. The original audio tracks are included where footage is not used.

Titles Include: OPEN G TUNING: Death Letter Blues, My Black Mama, Low Down Dirty Dog Blues, The Jinx Blues, Special Rider Blues, Walkin' Blues (from 1930), Dry Spell Blues, County Farm Blues OPEN D TUNING: Shetland Pony Blues, Preachin' The Blues, This Little Light of Mine, CROSS-NOTE TUNING: Clarksdale Moan, STANDARD TUNING: Depot Blues, Am I Right Or Am I Wrong, Walkin' Blues (from 1940's)

240 minutes - Level 2/3 - Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: The Guitar of Bukka White/T he Guitar of Son House: Yes, these DVDs show you how to play guitar in the style of Mississippi Delta bluesmen Son House and Bukka White. But thanks to master teacher Tom Feldmann, they are so much more. Feldmann is on a roll of late. He's proven himself an able revivalist and interpreter of classic blues and gospel fingerpicking and slide on several solo recordings, including his latest, Lone Wolf Blues, recently lauded in Vintage Guitar Magazine. His series of how-to DVDs are exemplary, and also include releases on Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Willie Johnson, gospel blues including Charlie Patton and others, and a general guide to bottleneck slide.

Feldmann's DVDs get deep into the deep blues. He analyses the musical style, how House and White approached a song and made it their own. His instruction is intermixed with rare filmed performances of the bluesmen and original audio tracks wherever possible. On the two-DVD House set, he deconstructs 15 songs: 8 in open G tuning, 3 in open D, 1 in cross-note, and 3 in standard. These songs cover all aspects of House's career, from the classic 30s and 40s recordings through his rediscovery. The White DVDs follow the same approach and scope.

The Son House DVD runs four hours while the Bukka White lesson runs over two hours. These are in truth, detailed documentary films on the mechanics of House and White's playing - documentaries no mainstream production company would ever dream of making, but ideal for diehard guitarists. You might even sit down some evening with a shot of whiskey, your dog curled up at your feet, and just watch for fun and edification. But remember, you can learn to play from them as well. - Michael Dregni/Vintage Guitar Magazine

Review: On quite a roll from tackling bedrock country bluesmen as far and wide as Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, Barbecue Bob and Mississippi John Hurt, six-string professor Tom Feldmann is now gunning for Son House. And he's outdone himself honoring the godfather of deep Delta blues with this master class. Luxuriating across four hours of step-by-step guidance, the two DVDs are the exact guitar tutorial Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters would've killed for when originally struggling to decipher their idol's technique and repertoire. Because Feldmann's got all the moves worked out, from the slideless "Jinx Blues" to "Death Letter Blues" with a slide riff just as killer as its macabre imagery. Even to the heart-stabbed "Low Down Dirty Dog Blues." Saddled with such fret-rattling misery, House wasn't exactly a Mississippi merrymaker. He was more about gripping you by the throat with brutal themes, then bruising your soul with strings traumatically snapped, bent up, shoved down and sheared with whip-crack bottleneck flourishes. But besides woodshedding time, The Guitar Of Son House also saves you tens of thousands of dollars by including the ultra-ultra-rare Paramount sides "Clarksdale Moan" and "Mississippi County Farm Blues" among its 15 dissected songs. Twenty three of House's original audio recordings (including that wickedly expensive pair) are stuffed into the bonus goodies, along with priceless film of him in mesmerizing action, an entertaining conversation with Stefan Grossman who recorded with him and a tab/ music/lyric booklet. All but Son's string tie and hulking brass slide are inside here. - Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag 

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GGW049 - The Guitar of Skip James

Code : GGW049

Isi : 2 DVD

Description

"Tom Feldmann is an instrumentalist of the first degree, renowned among guitarists as an instructor and preservationist. No one can teach Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James or Bukka White better than Feldmann, a master fingerpicker and slide guitarist." – Living Blues 

"The strangest, most complex and bizarre of all blues artists." - John Fahey 

Skip James is perhaps the most stylistically original of the blues performers from the Mississippi River Delta region, with his unusual Dm (Crossnote) tuning, haunting falsetto vocals, and an intense, variable marriage of music and text. James made a number of recordings for Paramount before the Depression carried him into obscurity, but those recordings would form the basis of his reputation and secure him as one of the legends of that classic era of blues.

In this 2DVD set Tom Feldmann brings you through Skip's classic 1931 blues recordings as well as a few fan favorites from his rediscovery years, Crow Jane, Worried Blues, Look Down the Road and All Night Long. Nearly all of the 1931 guitar recordings were played using Crossnote tuning and DVD One is dedicated to those songs with Feldmann teaching you every aspect of Skip's playing in this tuning. DVD Two continues with two more classics in Crossnote tuning and then turns to Standard tuning for songs in D and E positions and ends with Skip's lone Spanish tuning (Open G) recording, Special Rider Blues

Tablature is included as a PDF file on each DVD. In addition the original 1931 recordings of the songs covered are included as well as live footage of Skip James from the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. 

DVD ONE: Crossnote Tuning: Cypress Grove Blues, Devil Got My Woman,Yola My Blues Away, Hard Time Killing Floor, Cherry Ball Blues, Four O'Clock Blues, Hard Luck Child 

DVD TWO: Crossnote Tuning: Illinois Blues, I'm So Glad, Standard Tuning: Drunken Spree, Crow Jane, Worried Blues, Look Down the Road, All Night Long, Spanish Tuning: Special Rider Blues

234 minutes - Level 3 - Detailed tab/music PDF file included on each DVD

Review: This is the latest in a long line of superlative DVDs produced by the mighty Stefan Grossman team, and each time that I get one to review, I am reminded just how much I have still to learn. This particular session is taught by Tom Feldman who is a superb fingerstyle guitarist in his own right and he has several recordings to his credit. The set consists of two discs, covering most of Skip James recorded output from the Thirties, together with his more recent sixties product (if you can call fifty years ago recent!) Each disc opens with a short clip of Skip James performing one of his songs, before it cuts back to Tom. Beautifully filmed as always with no other visual distractions, you get a split screen showing both hands in play, and it is quite easy to see which fret and string is in play at any time, but just in case there were any doubt, Tom tells you what he is doing. 

He first of all introduces each song and then plays it through, before breaking it down so that you can follow as required. Each disc is divided into east to follow sections and the first disc covers almost all of Skip James 1931 recordings in Crossnote tuning (DADFAD). The disc ends with audio files of 4 of the recordings.

Disc two also opens with a short film clip and then once more goes to the same format and consists of a further two songs in Crossnote tuning, then going into standard tuning for a few of Skips songs from the Sixties before closing with Skips only song in Spanish tuning Special Rider Blues. As if that were not all, each disc has PDF files that will enable you to print off the full TAB for every one of the tunes on the discs, and having done just that, I can confirm that the layout and print quality are superb. - Dave Stone/Blues Matters!

Review: And then there is Skip James. The Delta's most harrowing of stylists. The bluest of the blue, whose guitar spins intricate webs between you and its mesmeric melodies. The one who did with Crossnote (Open D Minor) tuning what Poe did with nouns or Dali with paints: That is, create an airtight world of psychological unrest. When "Cherry Ball Blues" or his even more emotionally crippling "Devil Got My Woman" first spun on Depression-era phonographs, nobody heard anything like that level of eerie distress before. Nobody has heard anything like that ever since. Countless have come under its spell, claiming everyone from Rory Block to Ritchie Blackmore, Dion to Beck, Eric Clapton to Buddy Guy. Even the founding fathers, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters too. So you are in the best of company with fellow guitarists likewise enthralled with Skip's style, repertoire and mystique. Facilitating your transformation is Tom Feldmann, a shellac scholar who painstakingly scrutinizes the scratchy grooves of ancient blues 78s for their technical secrets so you don't have to. He's up to his usual spectacular self here, deciphering James' precise maneuvers with unerring clarity and calmed patience. Disassembling, then reassembling 11 haunters from 1931 ("Cypress Grove Blues" and "Hard Time Killing Floor" circle their gloom-and-doom riffs around and round like roadside buzzards) and four rediscovery-era favorites from the 1960s ("Crow Jane"), these two DVDs teach the very stuff which has sweated palms and clenched stomachs. Take your guitar beyond the pale. - Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag

Review: Tom Feldmann has also produced a number of instructional DVDs, focusing on seminal country blues artists like Son House, Charlie Patton, John Hurt, Robert Johnson, and Fred McDowell; this set on Skip James is his latest. Feldmann teaches 15 of James's pieces, including two of his most popular songs, "I'm So Glad" and "Hard Time Killin' Floor." He sings and plays each piece as a performance version, then teaches each passage and plays through the tune on split screen, which shows clearly what the picking and fretting hands are doing. Feldmann doesn't discuss James's biography or musical lineage, but his performances are strong and convey emotional depth. Several tunes are taught in the "crossnote" D minor tuning that James adopted and used for some of his best-known early pieces, followed by others from the 1960s, played in standard tuning, then "Special Rider Blues" in open G tuning. The lesson includes James's 1930s recordings and several video segments of him performing in the 1960s. James's playing was sometimes erratic, particularly in his later years, and Feldman strikes a good balance by preserving odd bar lengths but smoothing out some of James's rhythms. By doing so, I sense he's presenting the spirit of these great guitar pieces without being slavishly purist. This lesson will pay off for intermediate and advanced guitarists who want to learn Skip James's guitar arrangements, although James's techniques also embody arranging concepts that are generally useful in fingerstyle playing, such as octave runs and placement of thematic lines in different registers. I strongly recommend it. - Patrick Ragains/Minor 7th

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GGW036 - Tom Feldmann - Delta Blues Guitar

Code : GGW036

Isi : 1 DVD9

Description

"Tom Feldmann is an instrumentalist of the first degree, renowned among guitarists as an instructor and preservationist. No one can teach Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James or Bukka White better than Feldmann, a master fingerpicker and slide guitarist." – Living Blues 

Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. Created by black musicians who lived and worked on the farms in north Mississippi, these men and women drew on influences from church songs, prison songs, African rhythms, and early American folk traditions to fashion a new form of music. Unbeknownst to them, the music created in this relatively small area that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers would spread the world over and shape musical history.

In this lesson Tom Feldmann takes you to where it all began, Dockery Plantation, dubbed "The Birthplace of the Blues" and highlights the earliest recording artists that gave Dockery its legendary status: Charlie Patton, Son House, Willie Brown and Tommy Johnson.

You will learn a few songs by each artist, giving you a taste of the individuals themselves as well as the genre as a whole. The majority of the lesson is done out of standard tuning, focusing on E, C and A positions. From standard tuning you move to Drop D tuning for Tommy Johnson's Big Road Blues and then to Open G (Spanish tuning) for Willie Brown's Future Blues.

Of course no lesson on Delta blues guitar would be complete without a look at bottleneck slide and this lesson is no exception with Feldmann closing with two trailblazers of bottleneck slide, Son House and Charlie Patton.

A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. In addition the original recordings of all the tunes are included.

Titles include: STANDARD TUNING: M&O Blues, Stone Pony Blues, 34 Blues, Morning Prayer Blues, A Down The Staff, Lonesome Home Blues DROP D TUNING: Big Road Blues SPANISH TUNING: Future Blues, Levee Camp Moan, It Won't Be Long

152 minutes - Level 2/3 - Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: In days of futures past, Will Dockery's plantation was the world headquarters of Delta blues, a proving ground off in the bottomlands of Sunflower County where invention in Mississippi music making birthed the genre as the 1910s aged into the 1920s and 1930s. It was where the party got started. The resident kingpin was none other than Charlie Patton, the original Goodtime Charlie whose walloping guitar and matching crushed-glass croak were as much a part of shake-the-shack Saturday nights as the liquor, dice and knife fights. His wingman was the string-snapper Willie Brown-- yeah, that same "you can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown" of "Cross Road Blues" fame. But a fallen Baptist preacher with a wicked slide addiction by the name of Son House also began hanging around, along with Tommy Johnson, a fleet-fingered connoisseur of Sterno, rubbing alcohol and all other beverages even remotely intoxicating. A motley crew of guitar revolutionaries, but the four founding fathers nonetheless. Tom Feldmann, a country-blues fanatic who devours F chords for breakfast and can bottleneck up a blizzard in his sleep, calmly lays out the blueprints to ten of their classics here. Pried apart, piece by piece, are age-old anthems as deathless as Patton's "Stone Pony Blues" and Brown's "Future Blues," Tommy's "Big Road Blues" and Son's "Levee Camp Moan." But Feldmann dips yet deeper into the plantation playbook, exhuming gems like the betrayal slide piece "It Won't Be Long." He even enlists House, Houston Stackhouse and Joe Willie Wilkins to teach a bit too via bonus archival footage. - Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag

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GGW035 - Tom Feldmann - Masters of Bottleneck Blues Guitar

Code : GGW035

Isi : 2 DVD

Tom Feldmann Masters of Bottleneck Blues Guitar. Tom Feldmann is a master of bottleneck blues style and in these two DVDs, of over four hours, he breaks down the complexities of this way of playing. Songs range from beginner to advanced. Most songs have a mixture of chords and fingered notes in addition to the slide, making this a great lesson for those looking to expand their knowledge of the bottleneck/slide technique as well as the Open D and Open G tunings. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on each DVD. In addition the original recordings of all the tunes are included.
A good intermediate lesson for the asipring slide player. It assumes some knowledge of handling a bottleneck and keeping an alternating bass (Tom also has a lesson for beginning sliders, if that’s where you are at). In this lesson, Tom Feldmann covers tunes in Spanish and Vestapol tunings. He teaches both the slide moves and rhythm grooves in clear detail. The tunes he selected cover a variety of approaches, so you will be learning about melodic posibilties and developing fretboard awareness as you go. You may not add all of these tunes to your repertoire but there is still something to learn from trying them out.
Featuring Bobby Grant, Lead Belly, Blind Willie McTell, Barbecue Bob, Curly Weaver, Charley Lincoln, Bo Weavil Jackson, Ramblin’ Thomas, Furry Lewis, Peg Leg Howell, King Solomon Hill, Sam Collins, Kokomo Arnold, Tampa Red and Bumble Bee Slim.

Songs include:

• Nappy Headed Blues
• C.C. Rider
• Love Changing Blues
• Yo Yo Blues
• No No Blues
• Depot Blues
• You Can’t Keep No Brown
• I Am The Black Ace (Performance only)
• Shake It Gel
• Falling Down Blues
• Skin Game Blues
• Down On My Bended Knees
• Jail House Blues
• Rainy Night Blues
• Boogie Woogie Dance
• Homesick and Lonesome Blues
• No Woman, No Nickel

Language: English
Year: 2012
Country: USA
Running time: 4 hours
Quality: DVDRip
Video: AVC, 960×540, 29.970 fps,
Audio: AAC LC, 44.1 KHz
Booklet: Yes (PDF) + Mp3

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