Playing Through The Blues Review

“See just how easy it is to amaze your friends and become a ripping blues guitar player.”

While half of that statement may be true (it is easy to impress your friends if they know nothing at all about guitar; if they do, then you are out of luck) the entire statement, read as a whole, insinuates that learning to become a ripping guitar player is easy.

It is not.

Too many products rely on gimmicky sales pitches instead of product quality. But before we judge Playing Through the Blues, let’s give it a chance; maybe it is an exception. Maybe it just suffers from Bad Catch Line and Overly Promising Syndrome.

So, let's check out the lessons...

So what does this set include? An eBook outlining the lessons through tabs, a members-only blog, eighteen blues rhythm lessons and a lead guitar course, ten jam tracks, and a bonus twenty licks.

First thing’s first; the eBook. The eBook is only tablature. There is very little descriptive text or fingering patterns or much else. This leaves a bit to be desired, as it would be helpful to have the lessons explained in full. This is not a deal breaker, but it is inconvenient.

The members-only blog isn’t much. There are millions of blogs on the internet, and thousands of them are dedicated to music and playing guitar. Pretty much all of them are free. This is where the product start to feel like a thanksgiving turkey that has been stuffed with newspaper to make it look plumper than it actually is.

The eighteen blues lessons are decent, but the video quality is a bit on the amateurish side. It looks like the lessons were shot with a web camera. No product costing fifty dollars should look like that, especially while there are free 1080p lessons on YouTube made in people’s basements.

The twenty bonus licks also seem to be a bit more of that newspaper stuffing; they are basically revamped versions of some of the lessons in the book and on the video. While this is a good idea for samples, it isn’t a good idea for product.

The ten jam tracks are fairly well constructed. They would be a plus – if Hamlin didn’t then try to tell you how the video lessons can be used as more backing tracks and claim that basically you get twenty eight not ten. It’s just more stuffing, and more amateurish marketing strategy – the kind which you see on eBay where a product name is full of “@” symbols and exclamation marks and capitals. It subtracts from the credibility.

In the end, the only worthy part of the set are the lessons themselves. They aren’t backing tracks, regardless of the claim. They are well constructed despite the lack of video quality. The only issue is that they only cover the basics.

So all in all, the claim of becoming a ripping guitar player is just a cheap sales pitch. In the end, if you want to learn the basics and promote an independent instructor, then Griff Hamlin’s Playing Through the Blues is the way to go. If you prefer more for your money, it will be best to look elsewhere.

We Recommed Learn And Master Blues Guitar Instead...

With Learn and Master Blues Guitar, you’ll receive a set of 6 DVDs, a Jam Along DVD & CD, 2 bonus interviews with blues guitar legends, and a downloadable instructional guidebook. That's more than 8 hours of intense blues guitar instruction!

Read our full review of Learn And Master Blues Guitar here...