Homespun

Get both of Mike Dowling's excursions into the world of bottleneck blues guitar at a special price and SAVE!

Guitarist Mike Dowling has made a lesson detailing the slide technique that he has mastered during his long and fruitful career. Whether you're a fingerpicker ready to incorporate the slide or a slide player looking for new challenges, this lesson is a must. East coast style Piedmont blues is Mike's forte, and in this comprehensive, articulate lesson workshop he helps you negotiate the pitfalls as well as the possibilities inherent in fingerpicking, bottleneck style.

Lesson 1: You'll learn how to incorporate fretted chord forms with your slide work and crisp right-hand patterns that will keep it all moving along. Mikes teaches new turnarounds and syncopations, damping techniques for the right- and left-hand, and refinements for vibrato that will make even the simplest lines sound musical. Using primarily D tuning, Mike teaches non-bottleneck tunes he's adapted to the bottleneck, including Mean Ol' Frisco, Stranger Here,  and Tampa Red's Boogie Woogie Dance in addition to his own Swamp Dog Blues, and the haunting Jan's Song.

Lesson 2: Mike teaches precision bottleneck techniques designed to broaden your repertoire, textures and rhythms. Mike starts by teaching his unique version of Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor which uses a rumba beat in Open G tuning. His funky, irrepressible Drop Down Mama is an absolute classic, a fantastic lesson in syncopation and groove. From there, try D minor tuning for a haunting vocal and guitar version of The Cuckoo. After some tips on Open D tuning, Dowling launches into a study of his own tune Street Corner Rag. This fantastic piece includes fingerpicking, syncopation and slide enhancements for a true tour-de-force of bottleneck guitar work.