Learn To Play Guitar With John Miller

John Miller

At the age of 12, John Miller was inspired to play the guitar after seeing Mississippi John Hurt perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. he bought his first guitar at the age of 16 and launched into an intensive period of study of Country Blues guitar, learning the music of John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, Bo Carter, Blind Blake, and other greats. By the time he was twenty-seven, John had released five solo albums to international critical acclaim.

Those albums ranged from Country blues and Old Time country music to the songs of George Gershwin. For the next 15 years, John focused on teaching, founding two music camps, composing, and building a vocabulary in Jazz and Latin music. In the last seven years, John has released CDs with a Jazz trio, Catwalk, duos with mandolinist John Reischman, violinist Ruthie Dornfeld, singer Becky Kilgore, and French cabaret music with the ensemble Rouge.

Says Miller of his musical travels, “I’ve played many many different styles of music in recent years, but I’ve come to realize that everything I’ve done has been informed by my early involvement with Country Blues and the lessons I learned from that music: the primacy of rhythm and the need to communicate with clarity and strength of purpose. I strive for those qualities in the music I play, and I hope that what I do honors the memory of my heroes, like John Hurt, who have passed on.”

John Miller - Atlanta Blues Guitar - DVD
Included on this DVD are transcriptions and teaching of recorded performances from the youthful Buddy Moss, a player who influenced generations of East Coast players that followed him, George Carter, a mysterious 12-string guitarist who recorded only four titles, Curley Weaver, a player’s player, widely acknowledged to be among the finest accompanists in the blues, Julius Daniels, who came down from North Carolina to Atlanta to record early on and Peg Leg Howell, a bootlegger-turned musician who busked in the streets of Atlanta both as a soloist and in a trio with the fiddler Eddie Anthony and guitarist Henry Williams. The songs presented in the lesson will expand both your right hand techniques and your knowledge of the neck, with one song employing the almost never encountered Open B flat tuning. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD, and contains all of the songs’ lyrics as well as transcriptions of the guitar parts. Also included are the original source recordings from which the transcriptions taught in the lesson were taken. Songs include: Curley Weaver "Ticket Agent", George Carter "Rising River Blues", Buddy Moss "New Lovin’ Blues" and "Oh Lordy Mama", Julius Daniels "99 Year Blues", Peg Leg Howell "Turtle Dove Blues" and "Low Down Rounder Blues".
(107 min) Printable PDF Booklet.................................................Price - $29.95

John Miller - Jackson Blues Guitar - DVD
Mississippi attracted a host of blues musicians in the period 1910--1940. Many players from small towns made their way to Jackson, which as the capital of Mississippi and a much larger city, held forth the promise of more and better work opportunities, and the possibility of making a living playing music rather than driving a mule or chopping cotton. The Jackson Blues scene was an unusually rich one, stylistically, spanning the gap from the sophisticated Pop blues of Bo Carter to the low-down blues of Rube Lacy and a host of players working between those two extremes. Included on this DVD are transcriptions and teaching of recorded performances from Tommy Johnson, one of the fountainheads of the Mississippi blues, Itta Bena natives Rube Lacy and Ishmon Bracey, with their distinctive vocal head tones and intense playing, the great Geeshie Wiley, a woman who played and sang as strongly as any man, Walter Vinson, guitarist and lead singer for the Mississippi Sheiks, and Bo Carter, a player with a rich chordal vocabulary and Jazzy sound. The songs presented offer a wide range of left and right hand approaches and ways of keeping time and will expand your your ability to play blues, moving far afield from the simple alternating bass. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD, and contains all of the songs’ lyrics as well as transcriptions of the guitar parts. Also included are the original source recordings from which the transcriptions taught in the lesson were taken. Songs include: Tommy Johnson "Lonesome Home Blues", Walter Vinson "Overtime Blues", Geeshie Wiley "Eagles On A Half", Rube Lacy "Ham Hound Crave", Ishmon Bracey "Four Day Blues", Bo Carter "Honey".
(97 min) Printable PDF Booklet...................................................Price - $29.95

John Miller - Memphis Blues Guitar - DVD
Memphis has long been a landing place for musicians from the surrounding rural areas in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was a wide open town with plenty of opportunities for musicians to perform their music and make a living. As a result of Memphis’ hub status, it developed a strong blues scene in the 1920s and 1930s, with a host of outstanding singers and players. Many of these musicians had successful careers as recording artists, but a surprisingly large number of similarly gifted musicians went unrecorded or only got the opportunity to record a few titles. This DVD lesson offers instruction in the music of many of the finest guitarists to record out of Memphis in the 1920s and 1930s. Included on this DVD are transcriptions and teaching of performances from the spectacular and hugely influential Memphis Minnie, transplanted Mississippians Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins and Frank Stokes and more obscure names from the past like Tom Dickson and Allen Shaw. The songs that are taught on the DVD have been selected for their musical merit, but also to build your skills as a Country Blues guitarist, with numbers in D, G, E and C in standard tuning, as well as Open G tuning. The technique building that will come from learning these tunes will give you tools to go in whatever direction you wish to take your music. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. This includes all the lyrics to the songs as well as transcriptions of the guitar playing. The original old recordings of all the tunes is also included. Songs include: Tom Dickson "Happy Blues", Allen Shaw "I Couldn’t Help It", Robert Wilkins "Long Train Blues", Frank Stokes "Frank Stokes’ Dream", Memphis Minnie "Reachin’ Pete", and Furry Lewis "Good Looking Girl Blues".
(90 min) Printable PDF booklet....................................................Price - $29.95

John Miller - Texas Blues Guitar - DVD
The state of Texas has had a major presence in the Blues, from the earliest days of the recording era right on up to the present day. So many tremendous Blues musicians have hailed from Texas, i.e. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin' Hopkins, T-Bone Walker, Freddie King. This DVD focuses on the Country Blues guitarists who first defined the Texas Blues sound and who put Texas on the map as a prime location in Blues Country. In this DVD lesson you'll have an opportunity to learn from the music of the greatest of the early Country Blues singer/guitarists, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Texas sharecropper and songster Mance Lipscomb, the almost forgotten Otis Harris, ace lyricist Funny Papa Smith, the spectacular and under recorded Willie Reed, and the Post-War master Lil’ Son Jackson. This is powerful and challenging guitar music, and the technique building that will result from learning to play these songs will take your blues playing to a new level. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. This includes all the lyrics to the songs as well as transcriptions of the guitar playing. The original old recordings of all the tunes is also included. Songs include: Willie Reed "Dreaming Blues", Mance Lipscomb "Tell Me Where You Stayed Last Night" and "Rocks and Gravel Makes a Solid Road", Otis Harris "You’ll Like My Loving", Funny Papa Smith "Fool’s Blues", Blind Lemon Jefferson "That Crawlin’ Baby Blues", Lil’ Son Jackson "Groundhog Blues".
(118 min) Printable PDF booklet..................................................Price - $29.95

John Miller Guitar Tab Books, Instruction DVDs, Solos, Arrangements, Video Lessons

John Miller