Hi, welcome to coolhandguitars, its a new buisiness and have a small online shop. I have been playing guitar for 25 years. It was my love for the guitar thats led me to creating this website.
I would class my guitar style as out and out blues with a touch of rock but Jazz/blues is the style of music i most favour now and the style i want to go out and play. I love being able mix soulful and melodic blues in with complex jazz bepop lines through a nice clean tone.
Quite some time ago i learnt the fundementals of jazz guitar like applying major scale modes, chromatic scale and different arpeggios over certain chords in 12 bar blues progessions and 2 5 1 progressions commonly found in jazz standards. I listen to sax players and trumpet players from the 1920s where it all began such as miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and john Coltrane.
Ive found the best tool a musician can have is your ear and thats how i learn music now by slowing down recordings and copying a bar or 2 at a time and adding it in to my improvisation, like building up a vocabulary. Aswell as listening to the horns section i listen to guitarists such as charlie christian, Wes Montgomery, grant green and Joe pass for inspiration.
From a young age I had a strong passion for music in which i started playing the piano at age 6, worked up to grade 4 classical piano before moving on to bass guitar and forming my first band playing the blues with 2 childhood friends. Shortly after this i joined a rock band playing rock covers and originals in and around Lincolnshire at regular gigs. I first picked up an electric guitar around the age of 9 but started playing properly and realised this is more for me and fell in love with the sound of the guitar and the blues especially. I spent a lot of hours throughout my childhood playing and practicing guitar and working through Rockschool grades and playing along to old blues records, mostly playing along to old blues records.
When i was about age 9 I came across a John lee hooker cassette tape when i started playing guitar and instantly fell in love with the blues, ill always be a blues guitarist at heart. As well as John lee hooker i started listening to and playing along to other old acoustic blues artists such as muddy waters and Robert Johnson as well as electric blues players like Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, BB king and Joe Bonamassa.
Ive started to reach out to other musicians whilst building up my repotoire and looking forward to the future in being able to get together and collaborate with other musicians and get out there and make some good music.