If you are like me, and thousands of other guitarists out there, you probably fall into the rut of playing the same old pentatonic licks you have been cranking out for years when improvising over a blues progression? Sound familiar? Well Chuck D’Aloia is the man to help you out, his instructional DVD “Blues With Brains” is specifically designed to help you break out of the box patterns and play a little less B.B. King and a little more Larry Carlton.

I should say by the way that this course is available as a download and iPod version so it is not strictly just a DVD! Anyway, all the examples are in A so there is continuity with the examples and don’t confuse you once Chuck moves onto more complex ideas. Blues With Brains starts out with a simple progression but showing you how to enhance the Minor Pentatonic over certain chords in the progression with altered notes that fit over the 7th and 7#9 chords. These are actually very simple examples to understand as they only change 1 note from the Minor Pentatonic per chord, so it is only a case of remembering when to substitute an E for an Eb and when to substitute an A for a G#. What Chuck keeps reinforcing is the need to learn the different Pentatonic shapes so that you can switch between different keys without changing position which will enable a more musical transition.

Chuck plays examples over backing tracks throughout to illustrate his enhanced blues ideas and his playing is really enjoyable to listen to, he has really great phrasing so rather than just playing the scale patterns up and down he adds his own personality and while you and I might not quite have the same level of improvisation skill as Chuck, it certainly seems achievable. Chuck doesn’t go at such a speed that will leave your head spinning with the theory either, it is all taught in a very cool laid back style.

One of my favourite parts of Blues With Brains is Chuck’s Diminished examples, I love the way that when he plays the first example he smiles and says “now that’s fancy right?”, yes it is, very fancy. That is exactly the kind of lick that will pop into my head when I’m improvising and I don’t know how to put it down on the fretboard so I end up doing some lame long bend instead. These Diminished examples are pretty inspiring because although they sound complicated because of the way the fretboard is laid out they are simple symmetrical patterns.

The download included 5 backing tracks which are featured throughout, so you can watch, listen and learn from the master before jamming over the backing tracks yourself and try to include some of the lessons learned. I particularly love the 5th jam track, it has that funky Steely Dan thing going on and is a perfect playground for trying out some Symmetrical licks.

Amazingly the download including those 5 backing tracks is a mere $25 which considering you are getting 1 hour and 15 minutes private tuition is an absolute bargain and is very simple to order using Paypal from the Blues With Brains section of his website. There is also an iPod version which is only $10. The download process is simple, once you have paid Chuck will send you a set of links using the popular service YouSendIt which will enable you to download the large files, be prepared though the main movie is 1.6Gb download.

For more information about Chuck and his tuition courses and his album Circle 7 head over to http://chuckdaloiamusic.com.

Update: Chuck just told me some extra info which I want to include:

The iPod version and an iTunes movie are now included in the download option. Using one of these allows you to download faster and see the lesson. Then you can download the QuickTime version overnight or when you have time. The download links stay up for 14 days.