As anyone who squeaked through 10th grade history knows, the alchemists were a semi-scientific posse of medieval individuals utterly hung up on the notion of transforming lead into gold.

<< Click player below for a sample video from the course >>

Of course, their efforts did not lead to economic good times, but Blues Alchemy addresses a much more useful and likely kind of transformation: turning those leaden, everyday blues licks and chord progressions into tasty and intriguing improvisational gold.

Blues Alchemy is about learning to play the changes, but not in the sense that jazz musicians do – it isn’t about learning every arpeggio and mode under the sun. Instead, on ten diverse chord progressions, master blues alchemist David Hamburger will teach you how to transform your blues bag into gold by learning how to target tones and "play the changes." This series of video guitar lessons will have a dramatic impact on your blues guitar solos as you learn how to apply these principles.

Adopting a hands-on playing approach, Hamburger guides you through 10 distinct blues guitar rhythm pattern lessons with variations, 10 distinct solo lessons with variations, plus dozens of extra blues licks and tricks of the trade.

Blues Alchemy includes 80 video guitar lessons, text overviews, standard notation and interactive Power Tab. Blues Alchemy is presented in TrueFire’s multi-media video player, which features zoom, speed control, looping and other useful instructional functions. 

Here's how Blues Alchemy is presented …

Ten blues instrumentals are broken up into a rhythm lesson and a solo lesson, each demonstrated in context against a drum and bass backing track.

The video rhythm lessons demonstrate the parts as written and then expands the parts to illustrate alternate voicings and fills to stretch the rhythm part out with.

The video solo lessons first demonstrate the solos as written, then breaks them down note-by-note, as well as demonstrating extra licks and variations.

Each pair of lessons (rhythm and solo) feature a jam backing track for students to practice over to help nail the parts being covered and expand on as well.

A text description provides an overview of the tune along with some background on artists and/or techniques synonymous with the blues style being covered.

Power Tab is included (interactive tablature for PC users), so you can see, hear and slow down the tablature and notation,