Based on its title you can safely assume that Slow Blues Power focuses on slow blues soloing and improvisation, but there's a couple of extraordinary qualities that deserve special mention and attention.

First off, only a handful of people on the planet can deliver the goods as well as Andy Aledort. If you’re a student of guitar or have ever picked up a guitar magazine, you are likely familiar (and in awe) of Aledort. Andy has served as senior editor for several top guitar magazines, has authored over 200 guitar instruction books, and has documented the styles and music of virtually every significant electric blues and rock guitar artist in history. You would be hard pressed to find anyone better qualified to present a more thorough and insightful slow blue curriculum than Andy Aledort.

Andy also happens to be a very well-respected blues player in his own right earning accolades from the likes of Johnny Winter, Joe Satriani, Warren Hayes, John Scofield, Billy Cox, Mike Stern and dozens of others. Suffice to say that Andy can talk the talk and walk the walk.

Andy happened to be in the neighborhood doing pre-tour rehearsals with the Dickey Betts band when he filmed this course. He’d film in the day and rehearse at night and then later wrote most of the lesson text while on tour. And it’s this unusual set of circumstances that triggered the other special quality of Slow Blues Power; Aledort was clearly “in the zone” during the making of Slow Blues Power - his demonstrations, breakdowns, and commentary are not just especially insightful, inspirational and educational – they comprise and represent perhaps his best work ever on the subject.

Andy covers a diverse range of soloing styles and techniques within the context of eight different key centers (E, F, G, A, Bb, C and D). Each key center series of lessons features different forms, feels and progressions and includes performances and detailed breakdowns covering requisite techniques, solo development, improvisation and application of theory. The soloing examples demonstrate a wide spectrum of both right- and left-hand articulation techniques, phrasing concepts and the stylistic signatures that are found in the playing of all blues guitar masters, ranging from Albert King, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, and Freddie King, to the blues/rock virtuosos such as Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Johnny Winter, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Aledort also takes you to grad school on doublestop sixths, sliding sixths, triads, opens strings, vibrato, hammers, ghost bends, pull-offs, fingerpicks, rolls, diminished 7th lines, cascading lines, expressions, forearm vibrato, B.B.'s box, thematic soloing, improvisation, two-to-three equivalency, repeating triplets, anticipating changes, stretching time, repetition, solo development, dynamics, oblique bends, slides, intervallic jumps, tremolo picking, ascending the fretboard, trills, glissandos and applications of composite blues, Mixolydian, Dorian, and major, minor, and dominant pentatonic scales.

Slow Blues Power is indeed an extraordinary learning experience and virtually bottomless resource of insight for any student of electric blues guitar.

Photograph of Andy Aledort courtesy of Cynthia Black