50 Fingerpicking Licks You Must Know (2014, Truefire)

Back in the early 40's, blues and jazz were pretty much synonymous. The big bands were exciting audiences with their new stomping jump blues performances, which Billboard recommended for "hepsters who go for swing and boogie, and beats in a loud, hot unrelenting style." Jump Blues combined the popular boogie-woogie rhythms of the day with gritty swing solos and "playful lyrics laced with jive talk." More than seven decades later, Jump Blues still pulls listeners out of their seats and onto the dance floor with its boogie-woogie grooves and heavy, insistent beats.

The path from pentatonic sameness to heavy jazzed blues cat-itude often appears strewn with mystifying theoretical explanations and effete bossa renditions of "The Days of Wine and Roses." Feh! David Hamburger's 50 Jazz-Blues Licks You MUST Know cuts right to the chase, offering up some of the baddest, bopping-est, funkiest and bluesiest ways to navigate through any shuffle, boogaloo, minor blues or jazz-blues chord changes. Hamburger digs deep into the 50s and 60s, when labels like Blue Note, Prestige and Riverside were serving up the funky, down-home music of guitarists like Kenny Burrell, Grant Green and Wes Montgomery, all of whom inspired some of the jazzed blues lickage in this collection. These alone are worth the price of admission, but as we all know, Hamburger is the consummate over-achiever and he sure didn't stop there…

Countless top-notch guitarists, from many different genres, have released records in the radio format known as Smooth Jazz. And why not?! Smooth Jazz has a wide and enthusiastic audience and it’s also commercially successful. That’s why so many of our guitar heroes dabble, if not specialize in the format. And that’s also why we asked NYC-based recording and performing artist, Gil Parris to put this versatile collection of 50 Smooth Jazz Licks You MUST Know together for your playing pleasure. Smooth Jazz favors melodic lines played over down-tempo grooves with an ear-pleasing palette of jazz, funk, blues and pop feels and textures. Gil’s handpicked collection of licks pay homage to the best in the biz…

There's no hiding behind a slow blues. That's the bad news. The good news is you don't need fancy fretwork, blazing technique, nuclear effect racks, or a giant Marshall wall to pull it off either. All you need is soul, a pair of good ears and a versatile vocabulary of slow blues lines and moves. You bring the former to the table and Anthony Stauffer will deliver the latter in this collection of 50 Slow Blues Licks You MUST Know.

Trovato's unique, signature style is blues-based and heavily spiced with country, rockabilly, twang, rock and jazz influences. 50 Voodoo Blues Licks You MUST Know extends the key learnings presented in his best-selling Voodoo Blues course with an expanded blues vocabulary of licks inspired by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Eric Johnson, Robben Ford, John Mayer, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Danny Gatton and many other witch doctors of the blues.

Texas blues dates back as far as the early 1900's but this collection of 50 licks focuses on the Texas blues scene that exploded on to the mainstream in the late 60's and early 70's. Heavily influenced by southern rock, blues-rock, slide and a dash of jazz, this modern style of Texas blues features the heavy use of memorable electric guitar riffs, blazing solos, exciting rhythm patterns and tasty turnarounds, all of which are showcased in this handpicked collection of 50 Texas Blues Licks You MUST Know.

Top NYC recording and performing artist, Angus Clark is your radio rock jock for this collection of 50 Radio Rock Licks You MUST Know inspired by the likes of Jeff Beck, Kirk Hammett, Jimi Hendrix, Mike McReady, Tony Iommi, Ritchie Blackmore, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, John Shanks, Trevor Rabin and David Gilmour. Not only is Angus one of the scene's go-to rock players, but he's also a passionate educator whose clinics and workshops always pull standing-room only audiences. Angus covers a lot of ground in this collection of lickage. You'll learn how to build tasty rockin' lines with the major scale, how to apply pre-bends and releases in your solos for optimal impact, pull-offs, slides, arpeggiated phrases, mixed major and minor pentatonic lines, repeating motives, intervallic lines, double-stops and triads, "money-maker" licks, suspended chord arpeggios, repetition licks, Mixolydian lines, ostinato patterns, and even how to pull melodic ideas from classical music and old standards. In short, plenty to keep you happily busy in the shed for many moons.