By Bruce Lamb

www.TheGuitarWorkshop.com

I have had the amazing pleasure of taking guitar lessons on finger style guitar blues and ragtime, lap style and Slide Guitar lessons from one of the best teachers out there and her name is Mary Flower. I have also had the pleasure of producing three DVD’s for her in their different styles of guitar mastery.

I first met Mary Flower at the guitar seminars work shop that was run by two other astounding guitar player Woody Mann, and Bob Brozman and I also want to mention Trevor Lawrence who pretty much ran the back end of the workshop and is also a great player.

The three DVD’s I produced for Mary teach three different styles of blues guitar. The first one in on playing blues guitar in the Key of E. The second DVD is playing Ragtime Style of Blues guitar. The third DVD is playing guitar in Dropped D Tuning.

Many blues guitarists feel that the key at E is both the most accessible and expressive key for deep blues sounds. Blues in E is a sound as old as the blues themselves. In this video, Mary shows you how to reach deep into the blues bag by teaching the licks and tricks that have kept this genre interesting and fun.

Going beyond mere role demonstration, she also explores the 12-bar blues structure and offers tips on creating your own arrangements. Starting with the Delta style where the thumb pounds out ifs steady, compelling bass, Mary shows you how to add single notes, up-the-neck bends, moveable chords, and powerful boogie-woogie patterns. Then she walks you through a plethora of blues turnarounds, the figures that add color and spice o your arrangements when you use them as fills between vocal lines.

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By Bruce Lamb

http://www.TheGuitarWorkShop.com

            If you are planning to attend a trip to learn to play guitar this year you may want to think about how you are going to transport your guitar to the many acoustic guitar, blues guitar, flat picking guitar, rock guitar, or Hawaiian slack key guitar lesson venues that are available.

 Case Extreme and The Fly It Safe guitar transporter. A new type guitar case that is designed to turn any gig bag or guitar case into a full blown hard knock travel protection unit. It’s extremely light weight material and strength, is why Air Born Express, United States Post Office, and other similar companies use shipping cartons made of this same space age material.

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By Bruce Lamb    

 www.CaseXtreme.com

As the inventor of CaseXtreme I have to speak up and say this about shipping your guitar rather than checking it as luggage on airlines. Packing it well and checking it as luggage  is much better than shipping your guitar with a common carrier.  Shippers like UPS; Fed-X etc. Also use Airplanes hello! And they have many more people in involved with the moving of your instrument.

 A driver picks it up and throws it in his truck. When it arrives to its home base location it is then off loaded by hand and tossed into a sorting bin then either thrown onto another smaller truck for delivery in town or onto a larger truck which takes it to their airport location and then  the process starts all over again. When it finally arrives to your location it could have been in several different trucks and planes and thrown onto many more conveyers belts and has a far greater chance of damage.

 A good travel case is the key.  Weight is the enemy no matter how good the case is the heaver it is the harder it falls. The inside of your case must have a lot of padding to absorb the shock and protect your guitar from the sides of your case.  Most guitar cases only have a ½ inch of low grade foam padding. If you have a guitar case, try this. Feel how dense the foam is by pinching it with your fingers and thumb. If it crushes easily it’s not really doing much good to protect your valuable guitar.

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Flying with Guitars and Photographic Equipment
By Bruce Lamb
http://www.CaseXtreme.com

If you are a guitar player or band member or make a living with anything that can be broken on an airplane or flight on any airline this article is for you. I invented a case that is 100% used and intended for protecting anything if you use airline travel. Although if you travel or ship anything on UPS, FedX or other shipping companies please listen up this article will save you money and grief if you are traveling with something that you don’t want destroyed while traveling.

First I’ll give me some of my background. I have been a videographer for 23 years and am also a guitar player. I was traveling with a group of well know acoustic guitar players and was in Las Vegas at a the (NATPE) trade show. This is a trade show where companies buy and sell television programs. I was promoting a show concept on learning to play guitar and had these guys playing in my booth. The name of the show is “The Guitar TV Workshop“ which is now an online lesson website were you can by DVD guitar lessons or take lessons on line. There are hundreds of hours of lessons on learning to play guitar on Acoustic Blues to Hawaiian Slack Key, or Ki ho ‘alu. The web site is
http://www.TheGuitarWorkShop.com The Artist or Instructors playing in my booth were
John Cephas, Martin Simpson, Woody Mann, and Orville Johnson all award winning players.

When I arrived in Las Vegas and went to get my bags, camera equipment, and guitars everything looked fine. I went to the hotel checked in and we hit the town. When I returned to my room I thought I would play a bit of guitar. That’s when I found the problem. I grabbed my National Steel guitar and when I started to play it just went thunk. The bridge got pushed in from something heavy being put on top of the case or a baggage handler inside crawling over it. The cone got pushed in as well and when I called the airline they said I only had 4 hour to file a claim. Or I got your screwed. Read the rest of this entry »