TXBA Speed Workshop

A few days ago I was surprised to see that I had only started to play the guitar 3 1/2 years ago. Considering that I started nearly on ground zero I came a long way for a person my age. Still listening to guitar players like Steve Ray Vaughn, Eric Clapton, Joe Bonamassa I feel inadequate to say the least. Trying to play along is like running with concrete boots and my playing has either little variation in speed or I cannot apply licks I’ve learned.

Anthony Stauffer from Texas Blues Alley is currently rolling our a Speed Workshop for the Locals (his online subscribers). The day he released it I obtain the material and started to work on it. The lick as well as the spider drills I was already familiar with but what was new was the step by step approach which starts you on a beginner level and improves your speed, dexterity and endurance. After a week in I can say I started to improve quite a lot. Some of that is due to consolidating / refining my technique but some is because I took the time every day to practice the drills and the exercises.

This course by itself is worth the membership and can help an aspiring beginner or intermediate blues guitar player to increase his/her speed but it requires hard work with a ton of repetition. The course comes with all the check lists for tracking, the instructions for both the drill and the exercises, animated tabs and the benchmark videos which are videos of every exercise at each milestone speed to check if and when you reach a given exercise milestone.

The only thing I am really struggling with are the hammer on and pull offs which are used quite a lot. I think the course should got a little bit deeper into the technique and the proper execution as this is pretty crucial. It is especially challenging for players with smaller hands like me.

This course has my two thumbs up and I wished it would have been there two years ago. The first week of the course is now the start of my daily practice routine and it will stay there for weeks to come. It already improved my playing and I am now comfortable to deal with TXBA’s Texas Flood Intermediate level course.

Cheers – Andy Schaefer