Welcome James T to Active Melody, and congrats on your first Video…
Brian has lots of stuff here in the style of Muddy Waters that I’m sure you will enjoy learning. Thanks for posting and look forward to seeing more from you..

Mark

@James T

Hi James, it takes courage to post one’s playing, so I am glad you felt comfortable enough with the community to do it!!
You are certainly on the way to my kind of blues, heavy riff based stuff….

Keep steady with the lessons here and you will see the progress…..

Be well,

Roberto

Hey james welcome on board!! There’s a lot of lessons of muddy waters style or kind that you love ep058 is One of my fav .. Thanks for sharing
Keep on playing
Ale

Thanks for sharing your first video with us, James. What a beautiful guitar! I totally dig its sound and I also like this heavy riff “bad to the bone” stuff.

As to your playing, I wouldn’t call it junk. It’s music. I recognized all riffs right after the first couple of notes, so it can’t be that bad. What has several times been recommended on this forum and what I also think is, that you are probably best advised to do the “Beginner Guitar Course” and perhaps an easier lesson to your liking parallel to that. I am looking forward to your next video!

Hi James and welcome aboard. That sure is a nice guitar. Nice to see you posting. As you continue to post your video clips, you’ll see and hear your progress, which I’m sure you’ll be smiling as time goes on as you keep playing that really nice sounding and really great looking guitar. What brand is it?

Thanks all, I am hitting the beginning course hard, I think I am up to module four. It is a beautiful guitar. I need a new amp though. The guitar is an ESP LTD EC 256. I love it. My wife, mom and aunt all went in to get it for me. I got a pretty good deal on it, they run 400.00. I actually went in to the store to try a tele but the kid in the store pointed me towards a Les Paul style guitar. I love it.

OK, ESP. Thems some fine guitars! You said you need a new amp. So many great amps out there for under $250 these days. Take a look at this amp: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/marshall-mg-series-mg30cfx-30w-1×10-guitar-combo-amp I don’t know the USD price though.

Yea man, you are on the right track. As long as you have the will to learn, and practice, it won’t take long at all. It just takes discipline.. A lot of great people here to help out. Congrats and welcome aboard..!

Thanks for stepping up.I see where you’re comin from.
Ron

Hey James, can tell you have the passion for playing, thanks for sharing with us!

Scott

Hi James,
I love your enthusiasm and thank you for sharing where you’re at. Brian’s lessons will help you navigate the fretboard to improvise with different musical styles but don’t ignore some of the groundwork you have to do. Get some basic music theory, ie. what are intervals, what intervals make up the basic chords, learn some basic chords and scales. Work on playing some scales or the pentatonic boxes smoothly, with efficient movement of your fretting fingers, maybe work with a metronome to get even timing. Maybe check out some basic beginner exercises on YouTube. With a little work on these things, I think you’ll get even more from this site. Don’t be frustrated, these things take time. Enjoy the progress as it comes. It took me about three years to be reasonably satisfied with my vibrato.
John

@James T,
You’re on the right track. And one thing is for sure.
Is a great Start by You.

James,you are all set up to begin learning to play! I would take Charjo’s advice as best as you can.If you start with the Am pentatonic scale in the 5 positions,you will be able to play in any scale simply by changing frets.Three frets down from the root gives you the major scales.The fingering stays the same! I would start there if you can!…………………Sal

James,glad to hear you have them memorized and working with them! I just wish I had this website 30 years ago,as I was kind of stuck in the I-IV-V position in E with the caged system!Hard to beat Brian’s lessons for the money.Keep up the good work………………Sal

Hi James,

Congrats to you for taking the plunge and sharing your playing with us. I would focus on trying to learn one of Brian’s lessons. I would supplement the lesson with working on the beginner’s and blues course.

Great job and I look forward to seeing your progress on the forum!

James, not sure how long you have been playing, but welcome to the journey. I will be joining you soon with my first video, now that I have the equipment to record.

No true improvement comes without many failures.

Keep it up.

Michael

Hi James, I think this blog post of Brian’s is “the” place to start; it’s a 12-bar balooze. There isn’t any tab, but there are only two basic chords to learn and you can find them in a million places online. You can build a lot of other things on this.