Techniques, Arrangements and Improvisation
Level 3
80-Minute DVD or VHS - Includes tab booklet

Kelly Joe Phelps is a singer and guitarist with depth, range and amazing technique. His smoky voice and intricate, subtle guitar work infuse his songs with soul and honesty, his own tunes as effortlessly authentic as the classics he performs so well. So it is with great pride and excitement that we announce the release of this DVD

Kelly Joe plays with his guitar flat on his lap Dobro style, picking, sliding and using his right hand on the body of the guitar to create a percussive rhythm. He is a blues player who uses his bar and alternate-thumb fingerpicking to acheive an amazing technical proficiency as well as an unusually free, improvisational style that defies easy categorization. As he puts it on this video, "I like music that doesn't lock itself down so tight."

Aside from his prodigious skills, Kelly Joe is a patient and articulate instructor, providing numerous insights into his musical craft. With a quiet intensity, he passes along invaluable information based on his years of experience both as a performer and as a teacher. (He has taught guitar, banjo and mandolin both privately and at the college level.) On this video, he gives detailed instruction in his unique approach to the guitar, starting with bar technique, string muting, use of the capo, picking style and how to find scale patterns in the open D tuning he uses throughout the lesson. He then gets into careful explanations of how he improvises a solo, basing it on the melody of a tune and using a combination of open and barred strings to create a melody line.

Kelly Joe covers, in detail, the traditional gospel song "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder," his funky minor-key blues "Black Crow Keeps Flying" and the classic folk song "Irene Goodnight" (as you've never heard it before!). Throughout the lesson he emphasizes the ability to freely develop your arrangement of a song and turn it into a vehicle to express your own emotions.

Starting out in standard tuning with the relatively straightforward fingerpicking song "Tommy" and the off-beat Delta-style blues tune "Sally Ruby," Kelly Joe teaches how to build arrangements and improvisations using textures, rhythmic devices, unusual chord forms, blues scales and a variety of guitar licks against a steady thumb bass.

One of the many revelations of this lesson is the in-depth look Kelly Joe gives us in how he takes a traditional song (Rev. Gary Davis’ "I Am the Light of This World" in open G tuning) and infuses it with his unique energy and passion. He plays it in its traditional form, and then demonstrates how he adds his own touch by changing both the guitar part and his vocal approach. Kelly Joe shows how he uses chord forms and scales to improvise his arrangement based on how he sees the fingerboard, moving up the neck to play high notes against open bass strings.

Kelly Joe then moves further into alternate tunings, showing you how you can (as he puts it) “change the strings to whatever you want and then find musical magic in it.” "Capman Bootman" is arranged in DADGCD, with its banjo-inspired modal sounds and African-like use of unison strings and harmony lines. For "River Rat Jimmy" and "Beggar’s Oil," Kelly Joe re-tunes to CGCGCF, once again detailing the chord forms and scale patterns that enable you to improvise melodically and create rich chord voicings for these riveting songs.