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Blues Improvisation For Beginners

Join this live masterclass and learn how to craft beautiful blues guitar solos in the style of your heroes. Stop repeating the same old tired licks and start creating varied and interesting solos full of bluesy feeling.

Craft beautiful blues solos in the style of your guitar heroes
B.B. King, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan:

Knowing how to craft a killer blues guitar solo is difficult. In fact, knowing how to even get started can be a challenge:

Should you learn lots of scales? Maybe learning songs is a better choice? Or perhaps you need to learn a load of different licks?

If you’ve found yourself asking these questions – or if you’ve dreamt of improvising like your blues guitar heroes but found yourself repeating the same two licks in the first shape of the minor pentatonic scale, this is the masterclass for you.

You will finally rid yourself of the frustration and sense of overwhelm that is holding you back.

Instead, you will learn exactly what your blues guitar heroes are doing, and how you can apply the same concepts in a simple and straightforward way in your own solos.

What you will learn:

Step 1

Understand blues fundamentals

To begin with, we’ll break down the key components of what actually makes an effective blues guitar solo, and the common elements that you will find in all of the solos of your blues guitar heroes

Step 2

Identify costly mistakes

After this, we’ll cover the key mistakes you are making which are robbing you of precious practice time and stopping you from improvising effectively

Step 3

Master the killer solo framework

Next, we’ll strip away all of the confusion and distraction, and look at simple soloing frameworks that you can replicate all over the fretboard and in different keys and musical contexts

Step 4

Establish musical connections

With an effective soloing framework in place, we can now push our improvisations on with beautiful connecting ideas that will give your solos a beautiful vocal and expressive quality

Step 5

Double down on technique

Understand how your blues guitar heroes use technique to craft beautiful and expressive blues guitar solos. Understand what it looks like to play with a high density of technique and how you can apply this in your solos

Step 6

Consolidate and advance

Next up, we’ll look at how you can build upon these ideas to keep pushing your playing to the next level. We’ll also cover a number of practice exercises you can add into your routine to keep developing your skills

Step 7

Questions

Finally, there will be an interactive section where we’ll cover any questions you might have about the material or about blues guitar soloing and improvisation

Stop spinning your wheels.
Start crafting beautiful blues guitar solos today.

I'm Aidan - The Happy Bluesman

I’ve played guitar for over 20 years and have coached hundreds of blues guitarists all over the world with amazing results.

I am passionate about blues guitar and about helping simplify the process for others, to help them start getting the results they deserve.

How I can help you:

I have spent thousands of hours teaching blues guitarists all over the world how to solo with confidence. By the end of the masterclass, I promise you will:

Success stories

What blues guitarists all over the world have learnt with the Happy Bluesman:

Aidan is a gem of a person. You would be very lucky to have him as your instructor in any form and along the way, before you know it, you will have a friend too.

Aidan’s instruction is based on very level-headed pedagogy which shines through – both in his one on one coaching sessions and in the online courses and articles in the Blues club.

He likes to go deep into a topic but since he breaks everything down into simple pieces, you never get overwhelmed. What this enables is a deep understanding and appreciation of the topic – both theoretically and practically. With such an understanding comes the desire to learn more and learn better – it’s a virtuous cycle.

He cares about you and wants you to become the musician you so badly want to be. So go join the Blues Club for the courses and take coaching from him. It won’t take long to see what I mean.

Coming to guitar later in life (50+), I was very motivated to practice, but I was looking for somebody to make my practice more efficient, while keeping it fun.

With Aidan, we have worked to set a direction – initially more lead/solo playing and now more rhythm playing – and then crafted a strategy of fundamentals (scale exercises to a metronome), songs that are within my ability, and solos/songs that stretch my ability. We meet every 2-3 weeks.

Aidan has a great way of relating guitar concepts back to other pursuits I have, such as writing and endurance sports. He isn’t afraid to tell me candidly that something is too easy or too difficult at this point in my guitar journey, but the best is when we identify a stretch goal and he tells me “you’ve got this, man!”, because with his help and support, I know that I do.

I guess I can sum it up by saying that other than my initial decision to pick up the guitar 3 years ago, working with Aidan has been the best decision in my nascent guitar journey.

I have played acoustic fingerstyle guitar for over 50 years. Although I have had many electric guitars over that time, I never felt that they were my natural instruments and have never considered that I was even slightly competent ‘plugged in’. I kept trying occasionally but was always disappointed at the lack of progress.

At the start of 2023 I started a series of fortnightly tuition sessions with Aidan over Zoom. These have become the highlight of my week.

We use the music of BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton as a starting point and build from there, working with the style that I have developed over the years, rather than fighting against it.

Working with Aidan has brought me great pleasure, and renewed my interest in the guitar. My electric guitars are now my ‘go to’ instruments and I look forward to practicing and playing every day!

I’m an intermediate player and before starting coaching, found that I had plateaued trying to learn on my own through YouTube. I was starting to lose motivation and momentum and so decided to reach out to Aidan at the beginning of the year.

My 1-2-1 sessions with Aidan have given me the focus and motivation I needed. I’ve really taken my playing to the next level and started to build confidence in my ability.

I meet with Aidan once every 2 weeks and he was very happy and able to work around my crazy schedule. When we do meet we have defined playing goals and work together at a granular level on the specific areas that I need to focus on.

It doesn’t matter what we are working on though, Aidan is always so positive and helpful! The whole programme has been fun, flexible and motivating and I am now a more confident, skilful and happy guitar player.

Since I began having coaching sessions with Aidan, I have seen a significant improvement in my ability to improvise and create solos. This is largely due to Aidan’s expert feedback and guidance.

He has a unique teaching style that is both patient and challenging. He is able to break down soloing concepts into manageable parts, making it easier for me to understand and apply them to my playing.

One of Aidan’s great strengths is his ability to provide constructive feedback. He is always quick to identify areas where I need to improve and offers practical suggestions for how to do so.

Such feedback has been invaluable in helping me make rapid progress with my soloing ability and has been incredibly inspiring for me, motivating me to work harder to achieve my own playing goals.

I recently started playing guitar again after a 10 year or so gap. I spent a couple of years learning from Youtube and other online sources and made some progress but was not getting some of the more advanced topics like modes, and did not feel comfortable with improvisation despite knowing the pentatonic and some major scale shapes. I also had trouble connecting shapes across the fretboard.

I started one-on-one lessons with Aidan four months ago with the goal of getting better at improvising, specifically in the John Mayer style. These lessons have taken my playing up another level entirely.

Aidan is an excellent teacher and knows how to make complicated subjects easier to understand. Having someone able to provide feedback on my playing and guide me to focus on specific topics has been a huge help.

I finally understand the modes and when to use them, have a better understanding of how to “tell a story” with a guitar solo, and I am much more comfortable with improvisation.

Before I started lessons with Aidan I felt like I was stuck in a rut of learning song after song. I had no idea how the songs were constructed, and I even started getting bored with what I was doing.

A year on from starting my coaching sessions and the results are amazing. My guitar playing and knowledge of theory in particular has improved dramatically.

Initially I knew very little about scales and trying to play notes all over the fretboard was something I only dreamed about. Now I am confident playing solos all over the neck and learning songs I used to watch people playing and wished I could do the same.

Not only is Aidan a great teacher but he’s a really nice guy and is always happy to help with any question I have. Keep up the good work Aidan!

“Super inspiring content from the most genuine guy. Aidan’s passion for the blues and love of guitar makes it a joy to keep learning from him”

Alex - Warwick, UK

“This website is blowing my mind. I really dig what you are giving the world and you got me hooked – I have to take all of your courses now! ”

Michael - Key West, Florida

“I struggled for years trying to understand blues guitar and gear until I found The Blues Club. It will help you find your path to success in the blues!

Sacha - Zurich, Switzerland