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Intermediate Blues Guitar Workshop with Scott Ainslie

September 17-22, 2021
Single Occupancy: $1,525
Double Occupancy: $1,300
Prices are per person and include tuition, lodging, all meals (sample menu), and boat transportation to the Light Station from our mainland base. An additional 9% Maine state lodging tax will be charged on the meals and lodging portion of the fee.

Registration: sign up with the online registration form.
If you are unable to sign up online, please find the printable PDF form here.

 
Scott Ainslie's Intermediate Blues Guitar Workshop

Scott Ainslie has a long and varied history as a musician, but the blues have been a thread running through it all. In 1992, after six years of work and research, Ainslie published Robert Johnson/At The Crossroads with Hal Leonard Corporation, following it with a DVD, Robert Johnson's Guitar Techniques, in 1997. He has six solo CDs to his credit and a raft of live performances on YouTube.com (indexed on his website at http://CattailMusic.com/videos ).

Over the past 25 years, Ainslie has become a "legacy instructor" at the Swannanoa Gathering's Guitar Week in western North Carolina, and at Common Ground on the Hill in Maryland. He has taught at the EuroBlues programs in England and is an experienced and well-reviewed teacher of core technique and repertoire across a variety of roots and blues guitar styles.

Coming to teach at Whitehead Island, Ainslie will bring all his expertise in right- and left-hand technique, slide, ragtime and delta blues guitar styles. The workshop will include group lessons on guitar accompaniments of Robert Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Blake, Rev. Gary Davis and others, as well as slide guitar in standard and open tunings, as requested by the participants.

Ainslie also teaches blues singing techniques for non-blues singers, explaining and demonstrating five or six core elements that African-based singers use to move their audiences. Having explained these, Ainslie then coaches singers one at a time on songs they already know to find ways and places to begin to incorporate some of these elements in their delivery with profound effect. Blues singing will be a good option for one of the workshop's sessions.

During the course of the workshop, time will be set aside for each student to have an individual, private coaching session on a tune or style of their own selection. This typically involves a tune the student knows and wants to complicate or flesh out.

Ainslie says, "We will gather together at our first meeting to talk about the course of our time together and outline the workshops and private lessons. You are welcome to bring a sound recording device, notebook for writing notes and, with certain restrictions, a video recording device."

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