A workstation for Delta Blues guitar

Last year I discovered a lesson on how to play Blind Willie Johnson’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”, and Mitch of Blah148 and Ploddings. Not only was the lesson straight-forward, teaching you the basics of the song, the lesson went deeper, showing you how to actually play the notes and get the feeling.

And so my journey started. When I discovered that Mitch was developing a collection of Robert Johnson lessons, I was very excited. When the lesson pack came out I was probably one of the first one to buy it.

The lesson songs are grouped together based on their structure. Many of Robert Johnson’s songs have very similar structures, and as such if you learn the structure of one song, with a few tweaks of note changes, you can easily learn the songs’ brothers and sisters quite quickly and easily. I found this approach was different from other lessons on the net; different in that it hasn’t been approached this way before, which is odd as it seems much more intuitive.

The site promises that you can learn it all in 2 weeks, and if i didn’t have a full time job, two kids, a wife, and 2 cats I might have been able to learn them all in that timeline, but it did take me about a month. As such, it is quite amazing. By grouping the songs into families, it did make the whole process much, much quicker. And despite being burdened with responsiblitles, I learned more songs in a month than I learned in a year.

I would highly recommend this lesson set, and would also highly recommend past and futures lessons from Mitch at Ploddings.

There are a number of people out there who provide lessons for the old blues greats, but when you hear the final product and compare it to the actual recording they can leave a lot to be desired. For whatever reason, the playing sounds nothing like the recording.

This is what sets Mitch apart from most of the others. Mitch shows you what is actually played on the recording, getting the notes right without adding unnecessary flourishes and embellishments. His genuine enthusiasm and care for the music shows through his correspondence and his ability to capture nuances of the songs he teaches.

I had the pleasure of working with Mitchell for 3 years in my quest to play fingerstyle blues guitar and learn all about Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt and other legends.

Mitchell can not only play all the standards and classics flawlessly and with ease, but he has a knack of explaining the hand and chord positions in a manner that makes sense to the mere mortal guitar player. On top of the amazing chops and technical skills Mitchell has, he also has an amazing understanding of the musical history and impact on future generations each of the early masters has had on the blues genre.

Mitchell is the most talented guitar teacher I have met in my 40+ years of trying to improve my playing. Thank you Mitchell!

I initially dove into Mitch's course on Robert Johnson and the Delta Blues. I am a novice guitar guitar player, and found he made it easy to follow, use, and pick up the main licks and choruses of the songs. Also, it's easy to use and navigate the many songs that are available. I got this course at a very good price for what I've gotten.

Now that I've watched the lessons, it's opened my eyes up to a whole new perspective and appreciation for R&B, Blues, Country, and so on.

I hope to develop my guitar ability learning Robert Johnsons style. My life feels like a Robert Johnson story but learning these licks and basic chord progression has helped me grasp some of these classic blues sounds. Keep up the good work!