The lines between country music, blues, and even rock are more blurred today than ever before. Legendary guitarists like Albert Lee, Brent Mason, Redd Volkaert, Johnny Hiland and Danny Gatton have all ‘countrified’ their fair share of blues progressions and rock grooves. Likewise, dozens of top contemporary rock and blues players have ‘countrified’ their solos with some tasty twang, hybrid picking, and pedal steel licks.

If you’re also itching to countrify your own blues or rock soloing vocabulary, Lars Schurse will get you there in a real hurry with his Countrified Blues Guitar Guidebook.

”We’ll cover key country techniques including hybrid picking, pedal steel licks, behind-the-nut bends, open string licks, and how to mix Mixolydian with blues scales. I’ll keep everything within the perspective of a blues or rock player. Each of these techniques will be explored in-depth and even if you only skim these chapters, you’ll be adding a bit of twang to your solos in no time flat.”

Awarded the Guitar Player Picks Award by Guitar Player Magazine for his extraordinary talents on the instrument, Lars Schurse is a sought-after live and studio guitarist. Spiegel Online calls him, ”One of the best country guitarists of today.” We call ourselves very lucky to welcome Lars to the family with this first TrueFire course, the Countrified Blues Guitar Guidebook!

In the first section of the course, Lars will demonstrate 6 key concepts and techniques: the CAGED System, Note Choice, Hybrid Picking, Pedal Steel Bending, Behind the Nut Bending, and Open String Licks.

With Lars as your guide, you’ll solo your way through 6 countrified blues performance studies putting all of the key concepts and technique to work in a real-world musical context.

Country Boy Went Down To The Crossroads
”This is a great hybrid picking exercise. It features ideas in the style of Albert Lee and is played over a backing track reminiscent of the band Cream.”

Elmira Street Blues
“This solo combines licks and ideas of Danny Gatton, Johnny Hiland and Brad Paisley over a Stevie Ray Vaughan style backing track. We practice concepts like pedal steel bending, double stops and the usage of the Mixolydian scale over a blues progression.”

Nitpicker
“This solo covers a lot of ground. We'll use techniques like behind the nut bends, Travis picking and sliding into partial chords. You'll come across lots of licks of the great country pickers like Brent Mason, Danny Gatton, and Redd Volkaert. All is played over a Texas Shuffle à la Stevie Ray Vaughan.“

Deep Down In Louisiana
“Here we'll play classic open position bluegrass licks of the great players over a Chuck Berry groove. We transfer them to the electric guitar by combining flatpicking and hybrid picking. The second chorus features an Albert Lee style repetition pattern that we move around to make the changes of a slow change blues.“

Laying It Down
“This one is full of sixteenth note lines in the style of the great contemporary country pickers like Brent Mason, Steve Piticco, Johnny Hiland and Redd Volkaert. We'll look at techniques such as hybrid picking, behind the nut bending and open-string licks. All is played over a laid back Eric Clapton style backing track.”

Telecasting
“Here we'll come across lots of great double stop licks and behind the nut bending ideas all played over an E Blues shuffle. We'll look at scalar and chordal concepts for note choice by analyzing the lines of some legendary pickers, such as Danny Gatton and Redd Volkaert.“

Lars will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the key examples and performances. Plus, you’ll be able to use TrueFire’s learning tool to sync the tab and notation to the video and can also loop or slow down the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace. All of the backing tracks are included to work with on your own as well.

Grab your guitar and let's get countrified with Lars Schurse!