richollander
Verified buyer
04/28/26
Good
Free Hand Blues
10 Blues Soloing Strategies for Connecting What You Play To What You Feel
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Keith Wyatt
Educator
Genres
About this course
Good blues has humor, sex, danger; a good man feeling bad, a bad man feeling good, Lightning in a bottle — three chords and the truth! Great Blues guitarists connect with their listeners on an emotional level. In skilled hands, blues solos can evoke a whole range of human emotion.
As we aspiring players start developing our own soloing skills, we tend to think about what scales, arpeggios, or licks to use and that’s why we find ourselves playing more notes, but less music.
Keith Wyatt shares 10 distinctive blues soloing strategies and as much different approach in Free Hand Blues. You’ll learn how to “play what you feel” to spark emotional reactions and connect with your listeners.
”A single blues phrase can express power, romance, weariness, optimism, joy, despair - the whole range of human feelings.
How do you express desire? Frustration? Maintain an interesting musical conversation? Get your point across clearly? Fill the room with energy? Handle challenging music in a direct, bluesy way? Carry blues feels into other styles?
Start with what you want the listener to feel, and then line up the techniques and vocabulary to express it. I’ll show you how to craft solos by starting with the feelings that inspire you and then working backward to develop the musical tools that you’ll need to communicate them.
I’ve prepared 10 Free Hand Blues soloing studies, each focused on a key approach for building your solos following this principle.”
Keith Wyatt has been performing, recording, touring and teaching guitar professionally for over four decades. Keith directed the GIT guitar program, written best-selling instruction books, hundreds of articles, and released over a dozen full-length best-selling instructional videos. Keith’s online School of Blues Guitar, featured on ArtistWorks (our sister company) continues to be top-ranked and highly acclaimed.
You’ll have all of TrueFire’s advanced learning tools at your finger tips to personalize your workspace and learn at your own pace.
You can loop, slow down, or speed up any section of a lesson. Plus, all of the tab and notation is synced to the videos for the optimal learning experience. You’ll also get tab and standard notation files to print out, Guitar Pro files, and all of the backing tracks to practice with.
Grab your guitar, and let’s play some Free Hand Blues with Keith Wyatt!
As we aspiring players start developing our own soloing skills, we tend to think about what scales, arpeggios, or licks to use and that’s why we find ourselves playing more notes, but less music.
Keith Wyatt shares 10 distinctive blues soloing strategies and as much different approach in Free Hand Blues. You’ll learn how to “play what you feel” to spark emotional reactions and connect with your listeners.
”A single blues phrase can express power, romance, weariness, optimism, joy, despair - the whole range of human feelings.
How do you express desire? Frustration? Maintain an interesting musical conversation? Get your point across clearly? Fill the room with energy? Handle challenging music in a direct, bluesy way? Carry blues feels into other styles?
Start with what you want the listener to feel, and then line up the techniques and vocabulary to express it. I’ll show you how to craft solos by starting with the feelings that inspire you and then working backward to develop the musical tools that you’ll need to communicate them.
I’ve prepared 10 Free Hand Blues soloing studies, each focused on a key approach for building your solos following this principle.”
Keith Wyatt has been performing, recording, touring and teaching guitar professionally for over four decades. Keith directed the GIT guitar program, written best-selling instruction books, hundreds of articles, and released over a dozen full-length best-selling instructional videos. Keith’s online School of Blues Guitar, featured on ArtistWorks (our sister company) continues to be top-ranked and highly acclaimed.
You’ll have all of TrueFire’s advanced learning tools at your finger tips to personalize your workspace and learn at your own pace.
You can loop, slow down, or speed up any section of a lesson. Plus, all of the tab and notation is synced to the videos for the optimal learning experience. You’ll also get tab and standard notation files to print out, Guitar Pro files, and all of the backing tracks to practice with.
Grab your guitar, and let’s play some Free Hand Blues with Keith Wyatt!
What you'll learn
- Execute hybrid picking technique for expressive blues phrasing
- Use bending choices (whole step vs half step) to follow harmony
- Play authentic Memphis R&B rhythm guitar patterns
- Play blues ballads using melody as the foundation
- Handle 3-6-2-5 bridge progressions in blues context
Release date: 10/03/2022 • 4h 23m runtime
Sample lessons
Jelly on a Plate
Performance
Splainin'
Performance
The Feel is in Your Hands
Demonstration
Hand Party
Performance
What's included
42 lessons • 21 charts • 10 Jam Tracks
Free Hand Blues
Hi, I’m Keith Wyatt.
Great blues guitar players hit us on an emotional level. A single phrase can express power, romance, weariness, optimism, joy, despair - the whole range of human feelings.
If we’re thinking about what scales, arpeggios, or licks to use — then that’s what your audience will hear.
To create an emotional reaction with the listener — which we all aspire to do — we need to think of soloing in a much different way.
Start with what you want the listener to feel, and then line up the techniques and vocabulary to express it.
With this in mind, I’ve prepared 10 soloing studies, each focused on a key approach for building your solos following this principle.
Ready to dig in? Let's get started!
Great blues guitar players hit us on an emotional level. A single phrase can express power, romance, weariness, optimism, joy, despair - the whole range of human feelings.
If we’re thinking about what scales, arpeggios, or licks to use — then that’s what your audience will hear.
To create an emotional reaction with the listener — which we all aspire to do — we need to think of soloing in a much different way.
Start with what you want the listener to feel, and then line up the techniques and vocabulary to express it.
With this in mind, I’ve prepared 10 soloing studies, each focused on a key approach for building your solos following this principle.
Ready to dig in? Let's get started!
Make Your Solos Last
"Jelly on a Plate" is a medium 12-bar shuffle in F that demonstrates a variety of solo-building concepts, starting with interpreting a vocal melody and then transitioning to a new idea in each of the seven choruses. The technical ingredients all come from the blues tradition, but the emphasis here is on arranging, i.e. keeping the energy flowing naturally toward the conclusion. Learn the rhythms and solos phrase-by-phrase and chorus-by-chorus, then step back and listen to how it all flows. You get much more out of your existing vocabulary when you think "big picture" - small ideas add up to big results.
Jelly on a Plate
The aspiration of a great blues soloist is to tell a story with the guitar that enhances the song. Solos are usually short, a chorus or two, but the longer the solo, the more challenging it is to keep the listener engaged. "Jelly on a Plate" uses a variety of story-telling techniques including melody, repetition, contrast, energy flow, texture, dynamics and call-and-response. It's not just a bunch of licks strung together - there is a plan for how to develop the story so it builds to the final conclusion. Plan your work, work your plan and good things happen.
Jelly on a Plate
The aspiration of a great blues soloist is to tell a story with the guitar that enhances the song. Solos are usually short, a chorus or two, but the longer the solo, the more challenging it is to keep the listener engaged. "Jelly on a Plate" uses a variety of story-telling techniques including melody, repetition, contrast, energy flow, texture, dynamics and call-and-response. It's not just a bunch of licks strung together - there is a plan for how to develop the story so it builds to the final conclusion. Plan your work, work your plan and good things happen.
Jelly on a Plate
The aspiration of a great blues soloist is to tell a story with the guitar that enhances the song. Solos are usually short, a chorus or two, but the longer the solo, the more challenging it is to keep the listener engaged. "Jelly on a Plate" uses a variety of story-telling techniques including melody, repetition, contrast, energy flow, texture, dynamics and call-and-response. It's not just a bunch of licks strung together - there is a plan for how to develop the story so it builds to the final conclusion. Plan your work, work your plan and good things happen.
Play Less, Say More
"Splainin'" is an up-tempo shuffle in G based on standard ichanges arranged into more "uptown" form. The challenge is to play a choherent, bluesy solo at a fairly quick tempo over moving chords and shifting keys. The solution presented here is to simplify - less notes/more rhythm, and a focus on simple, repetitive themes that flow through the changes with only slight adjustments. When you're faced with a technical challenge, don't complicate - simplify. Clear ideas played with authority are the essential language of blues.
Splainin'
One of the traditional aspirations of blues is "play less, say more." How do you make that happen? This solo "splains" it as a conversation between different voices - one low and one high, one rhythmic and one melodic, one repetitive and one flowing. By concentrating on the quality of each phrase and playing simple, vocal ideas, the conversation stays on point. Great instrumentalists like Freddie King and Albert Collins recorded dozens of pieces like this that still sound fresh and natural decades later because what they didn't play counts as much as what they did.
+ 35 more lessons
Reviews
21 results
Fireweedak
Verified buyer
11/22/25
I recently purchased Keith Wyatt’s ‘FreeHand Blues’ & really like it!! It’s full of tasteful rhythms & licks & I’m already jumping around and working on tunes/pieces that are my favorites, for starters… Keith is a cool teacher & I thank him for sharing his knowledge & music…. !!
10YearsGone
Verified buyer
10/22/25
Keeping it Free Hand!
Love his teaching and was recommended for learning the blues!
littlesister
Verified buyer
10/07/25
Free Hand Blues
An excellent course. I learned phrasing I had missed out on years ago. Highly recommended
jrklowss
Verified buyer
09/08/25
Handy ways
Easy to follow and learn new ideas.
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