FREE Guitar Lessons with Kris Barras!
World-renowned guitar player and blues rock artist Kris Barras has teamed up with AMSonline and musicmasterclass.com to offer a 10 part free lesson series for all the guitarists out there that now find themselves with more time to freshen up their skills.
Part 1
Kris takes take you through the pentatonic scale shapes most commonly used in this style, but makes a point of trying to help get you out of the tried and tested shapes to introduce new licks and vocabulary that will open up your playing to help you find your own voice.
High quality guitar TABs accompany the lessons and can be downloaded from each lesson post.
We will be releasing these videos exclusively every Wednesday, so stay tuned!
Part 2
Kris will show you how to fluently move through the shapes of the minor pentatonic scale that were covered last week. There’s a cool exercise on learning to play on just one string using the same harmonic framework and some new lick ideas that combine pentatonic shapes, and also introduce syncopation for the pick up of a lick.
High quality guitar TABs accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page.
Part 3
This week it’s onto the blues. Kris will guide you through knowing which chord you are playing over in a typical 12 bar blues. You will learn about what chord numbers mean, and how they relate to a 12 bar sequence.
Then there’s a 12 bar study solo, making use of chord tones from the chords used in the backing track, in addition to the minor pentatonic and blues scales studied in parts 1 & 2.
High quality guitar TABs and backing track MP3 accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .
Part 4
So far the scale we’ve been using is a minor pentatonic scale, this week it’s onto more chordal awareness using dominant 7th chords and the mixolydian blues scale.
Kris helps to introduce the new concepts using the minor pentatonic framework taught in the first 3 sessions.
The mixolydian blues scale introduces a sweet major tonality to the new licks that are studied this week whilst keeping things well grounded in the blues.
High quality guitar TABs and backing track MP3 accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .
Part 5
This week it’s straight into licks.
Kris will guide you through licks that incorporate the mixolydian blues scale studied last week, but this time we’re in different positions on the fretboard. The focus this week is targeting particular chord tones from the chords of a dominant blues progression.
High quality guitar TABs accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .
Download the PDF from this lesson here:
Part 6
This week we’re into arpeggios.
Kris will guide you through the arpeggios that relate to each of the chords found within a dominant blues progression and teaches licks that use arpeggios.
This lesson is focusing on helping soloists find notes that are within the chords of a blues using an example solo as the basis.
We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.
High quality guitar TABs and a backing track accompany this lesson, downloadable on this page .
Download the PDF from this lesson here:
Download the backing track from this lesson here:
Part 7
This week our arpeggios are developed into a cool example solo.
Kris play the solo first, along with the backing track that you can download on this page. After a full 12 bar demonstration it’s a note for note walk-through of the solo.
We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.
High quality guitar TABs accompany this lesson, and the backing track, downloadable on this page .
Part 8
This week we’re mixing it up by changing to a minor blues.
This time chords I and IV are both minor, with the turn around using a major 7 chord for chord vi and a dominant 7 chord for the V chord.
Kris has written an example solo to help you change up to the new tonality which incorporates the natural minor, or Aeolian mode, and also some pentatonic minor licks that now change dependant on which chord we are on in addition to chord tones from the progression.
Kris will walk you through the solo bit by bit and high quality PDF transcriptions and backing track accompany this lesson.
We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.
Part 9
This week we’re adding some arpeggios to our minor blues.
Kris has written out the arpeggios that come from the chords covered in last week’s lesson, and runs through them first note by note, the TAB is downloadable on this page.
Kris has written another example solo over the same backing track as last week, this time though it’s incorporating the arpeggios that have just been demonstrated.
Kris will walk you through the solo bit by bit and high quality PDF transcriptions and backing track accompany this lesson.
We really hope you are enjoying this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.
Part 10
This week we’re adding some speed!
This final lesson is all about how blues players and blues rock players incorporate speed to add some variation to their soloing.
Kris guides you through some example licks, including repetition of a phrase using both double stops and scale ideas from major and minor pentatonic scales.
Next it’s onto sequencing, Kris uses ascending and descending sequences of pentatonic scales to create rising sequences that build in intensity.
Next it’s chromatic runs and how they can inject some creative injections of speed and fluency into your soling, and finally incorporating chromatic runs to link dominant 7 arpeggios.
TAB PDFs are available to download from this page.
We really hope you have enjoyed this free lesson series! Let us know by commenting in our socials.
Our Women in Music online short course is happening next week! Get to know the hosts
Next weekend (20-21 June & 27-28 June) we’re hosting our latest Women In Music short course. This time, we’re online!
Women in Music: Empowerment and Employability is designed for anyone identifying as female who wants to enhance their knowledge, network and toolkit with the aim of being employed in the music industries in any capacity. The 4 day course (spread across two subsequent weekends) will be hosted by industry experts and AMS friends Melisa Kelly and Karlyn King, and is available for anyone living in Scotland over 14 years of age.
On the first day we’ll be covering why the course is necessary and start to reflect on what valuable skills and experience we already have and want to gain, with modern industry context. The second day will focused on creative CV and mock interview skills, while day 3 deals with situations and intro’s to music management. The final day will feature a masterclass with Melisa Kelly (who is a professional singer and songwriter and also teaching day 2).
Melisa Kelly
Melisa Kelly has been working in the music industry for over ten years and in that time she has been a performer, a writer, and a tutor. Her band ‘Melisa Kelly and the Smokin Crows’, have played up and down the country including festivals Eden, and Kelburn Garden Party. Their album ‘Devil’s Luck’ which was solely written by Melisa, featured players from Jools Holland’s R’n’B orchestra and was mastered at Abbey Road studios by Geoff Pesche. She graduated from the Academy of Music and Sound with a BA Hons in Performance Industries (First Class) and went on to tutor for AMS in Vocals, Songwriting, and Employability. Melisa is currently writing her next album and is in the final semester of her Masters from UWS in Songwriting and Music Composition.
Karlyn King
Karlyn King is a Popular Music academic, lecturer and researcher who teaches all over the UK. She leads on modules such as Artist Development and PR, Sound and Culture and Popular Music Debates with a special interest in rock n roll history, here at AMS and at colleges across the UK. She is currently working on a PhD at University of Birmingham exploring the enduring format of vinyl.
She is a regular panel speaker and conference presenter on all things vinyl, including a recent event with UK band IDLES. In her spare time, she has toured as a singer/songwriter/guitarist and works for a subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
"You cannot enjoy the rhythm and ignore the blues" – anti-racism and race studies resources
We've provided a brief context to what has been happening in the states, along with a list of resources of which you can donate to help Black Lives Matter and relevant organisations, plus some reading lists to kick-start your race studies and race-consciousness.
So, what's happening in America? A very concise context:
On 25 May 2020 George Floyd, a black American man, was killed by a police officer while several looked on. It was captured on video and has now been watched by millions, globally. (As James Corden said in a great recent statement on white responsibly) If this was an isolated innocent it would be a horrific tragedy, and those responsible should be held accountable. But it is not a singular incident. This one of the latest (and there have been more since protesting begun) in several incidents of police brutality against black civilians.
To understand the weight of these protests is essential. This is not a recent issue, and anti-blackness goes way beyond this. In America, racial tensions, divisions, inequalities and violence against black bodies has been taking place since the first African was stolen from their homeland and forcibly given the identity, "slave", and transpired in various ways since. After slavery was abolished, the Jim Crow laws were brought in, laws included segregation and denying black people the vote – it was in many ways, enslavement under a new guise.
Many of us are taught about the Civil Rights Movement of the 5os and 60s, where divergent protest ideologies of Martin Luther King and Malcom X and the Black Panthers brought serious racial change to US, resulting in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but we aren't taught much else . We aren't taught the detailed ways in which racist legacies persist in new forms and dominant structures today. Although black Americans were then given the vote, it was by no means the end of America's racial problem.
To start to understand post-civil rights era systemic anti-blackness in the US, a good place to start might be Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness. She argues that the modern day criminal justice system in America, is essentially a contemporary 'Jim Crow' - a disproportionate amount of black people are incarcerated in America today, many for small crimes and the system, once your in, makes it near impossible to get-out (Ava DuVernay's film 13th also is a great explainer on this).
"We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” – Michelle Alexander
Floyd's tragic death belongs to a legacy of violence against black Americans. That's not to say day-to-day racist actions don't exist, they do, but we must see them as part of an enduring and morphing system - and see the protests in response many, many facets of repression, by extension.
This is also not just America's problem. Although the African American experience is unique in many ways, the Black British experience is all too similar and the pervasive issue of racism in the UK is all-too real, and commonly ignored (Read more on this here and here.) You can read more about the Black british context in a great book called Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge and use this GoogleDoc to find out How to Support Black Lives in the UK immediately.
"After all, you're accusing a you're accusing a captive population who has been robbed of everything of looting. I think it's obscene." – James Baldwin, 1968
~
So, what can you do?
IMMEDIATE ACTION – DONATE
Right now we can take tangible action to Black Lives Matter and related causes, committed to fighting racial injustice.
George Floyd Memorial Fund
Minnesota Freedom Fund
Black Lives Matter
Reclaim the Block
Black Visions Collective
Unicorn Riot
North Star Health Collective
Community Bail Funds (specifically -– National Bail Out Fund #FreeBlackMamas
National Bail Out Fund #FreeBlackMamas
George Floyd Memorial Fund by his brother
Justice For Breonna Taylor petition & fundraiser
Justice for Tony McDade
UK Resources and funds here.
and many more HERE.
LONG TERM - EDUCATE
This is a systemic problem, in the UK as well as the US. Reading black writers work, and academics who have written about race is a great place to start in understanding how entrenched, engrained, and pervasive the issue is. Also how this (white hegemony and racist ideology) plays out in the cultural and pop cultural realms.
Books
Women, Race, Class – Angela Davis
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son – James Baldwin
I know why the caged bird sings – Maya Angelou
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – bell hooks
Black Looks – bell hooks
Reel to real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies – bell hooks
The Signifyin' Monkey – Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment – Patricia Hill Collins
From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism – Patricia Hill Collins
Between The World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
So You Want To Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge
I will not be erased – galdem
What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture – Stuart Hall, in Gina Dent, ed., Black Popular Culture Journal
Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film – Ed Guerrero
The Souls of Black Men - Hazel Carby
Criteria of Black Art – W.E.B. Du Bois
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
Black skin, white masks – Frantz Fanon
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America – Tricia Rose
Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop – Imani Perry
(See also this Master List of Black Revolutionary Texts)
Films
Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee)
13th (Ava Duvernay)
Dear White People (Justin Simien) - Netflix
If Beale Street Could Talk
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011, Göran Olsson)
Daughters of Dust (1993, Julie Dash)
Fruitvale Station (2013, Ryan Coogler)
Selma (2014, Ava DuVernay)
Malcolm X (1992, Spike Lee)
Get Out (2017, Jordan Peele)
Speeches / music
James Baldwin on the Black experience in America
Angela Davis 'on Violence and Revolution'
bell hooks - Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body
'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' – Gil Scot Heron
'Fight the Power' – Public Enemy (and article on Why It Still Resonates)
Podcasts
About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge
Come Through with Rebecca Carroll
Code Switch
No Country for Young Women
This Is Spoke
Say Your Mind
George The Poet on youth violence, representations and limitations of government
INTROGRATE WHITENESS:
White: Essays on race and culture – Richard Dyer
White fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism – Robin DiAngelo
On Being White and Other Lies – James Baldwin
KEEP GOING - SPEAK OUT, CALL OUT, STEP UP
Call it out if you see it, and of course take tangible action. Take note of your circles and how diverse the world around you is. It might involve having awkward or difficult conversations you haven't had before. Keep it going, day in, day out. Also going forward, take check of the images and words and stories told to you – how does pop culture - film, music, etc, engrain these ideologies? And how do structures and infrastructures work to keep certain people down?
Dates announced for Scotland online short courses!
We’ve updated our new free short-course schedule for summer!
Check out dates, times and more details on the courses below.
• 1st June – Sound Production
• 8th June – Sound Production
• 8th June – Hip-Hop and Rap with Steg G
• 20th June – Women in Music: Empowerment and Employability with Karlyn King and Melisa Kelly
Each class is open to anyone currently living in Scotland, and of course, is completely free.
You can apply via the link below or contact our Scotland teams:
[email protected]
Exeter Uncovered calls for Devon bands to take part in new Stay Home Sessions
The Stay Home Sessions launches Thursday 14 May with live performances from, SVVIM, Okay Bye, Ollie Dixon and Soote Sprite via the instagram account of the Grassroots publication and digital platform Exeter Uncovered.
The event promises several hours of live music from some of Exeter's brightest talents. Check out the incredible event poster below (artwork provided by Grace Elizabeth of Okay Bye) and make sure you tune in next Thursday!
Plus, Exeter Uncovered are also now calling for Exeter or Devon-based bands, including AMS student bands and student music projects, to participate for an Instagram live session, for a date TBC.
More details will be released soon. In the meantime, if you're a Devon-based AMS student and you're interested in being involved, please email our freelance marketing officer Izzy: [email protected], stating your interest.
Students! Submit your Self Isolation Sessions to us
Calling all AMS and AMSonline students! This is an open call. We want to see and share the great stuff you’ve been creating during lockdown.
Been jammin’ during lockdown? Made use of some of this free time to write a new song, or cover an old one? We’d love to hear from you. Lately we’ve been sourcing and sharing some video clips from our students who have been doing some solo-sessions during the pandemic.
Simply email: [email protected] or message our main page on Facebook or Instagram, and we’ll re-post and share your self isolation session and include you on our blog post when all this is over!
Happy jammin’
AMS.
Students! Submit your Self Isolation Sessions to us
Calling all AMS and AMSonline students! This is an open call. We want to see and share the great stuff you've been creating during lockdown.
Been jammin' during lockdown? Made use of some of this free time to write a new song, or cover an old one? We'd love to hear from you. Lately we've been sourcing and sharing some video clips from our students who have been doing some solo-sessions during the pandemic.
Simply email: [email protected] or message our main page on Facebook or Instagram, and we'll re-post and share your self isolation session and include you on our blog post when all this is over!
Happy jammin'
AMS.
Feast your ears on our Lockdown Playlist!
Lockdown Listening from our Exeter team.
AMS Exeter's Jemma Sloman has curated an incredible playlist for us – perfect soul food for all your lockdown listening needs. It includes Students and Staff members past and present of AMS Exeter, with all the sounds from our South West centre and hub, buzzing under the umbrella of one perfect little playlist.
So what's in there? It's truly packed full of goodness, featuring tracks like Pattern Pusher's Crazy Enough, and Shakey, Lizzie Kirwan's The Unknown, Shake the Geek's Jenga, and Bad Screens from First Person. Perfect to get tucked into on one of these quiet - or not so quiet - lockdown days.
Plus the playlist also features two tracks from the new band and product of lockdown, Wired Design – made up of two of our Exeter staff members; Jon the Level 3 course leader and Jordan our Exeter technician.
Get locked.
The AMS April playlist is here!
We almost forgot about this one...
Don't worry, we're back on track! Our AMS Glasgow monthly playlist series returns, and this time, we've teamed up with a BA (Hons) alumni for a specially curated April edition of our Spotify instalment.
Craig – the head honcho of rock and metal promo crew, Goddamned Promotions – helped us curate our latest beefy playlist. It's a hard hitter, featuring the likes of The Massacre Cave, Black Peaks, Godeater, VEXED, and Dead By Monday.
Need some shredz? Shreds here. ????