by If you play the guitar, you gotta love Redd Volkaert and his mastery of the Fender Telecaster. Redd wants to teach you how to play Country Blues in his fantastic and warm and funny DVD, “TeleTwang.”
You fall in love with Redd because he’s a regular guy with tremendous playing talent and his reassuring teaching style promises that if Redd can do it, so can you.
Redd, in the midst of teaching us, shares stories about his life. He doesn’t read music, but he has a good ear. When Redd was a child, his guitar instructor dropped him because Redd was imitating what was taught instead of reading the notes on a page.
As we witness Redd and his massive ham hock hands flickering up and down the fretboard — we are left to wonder why reading music matters — and we think there must be a better way to help train the non-traditional musician who just wants to play instead of being formed into middling mindset.
Following Redd’s teaching style is simple and flowing. When you’re done with the DVD, you can really play like Redd!
Redd is direct, not full of a lot of patience, and you better keep up or he’ll leave you behind:
Redd Volkaert is my favorite kind of kin — he’s strong, amusing, a no-b.s.-sorta-guy and he can play a Telecaster like it was grown from his fingers.
All DVD tutorials should be filled with such love and passion — with Redd Volkaert’s TeleTwang, you get both — in a neverending honor to his brilliant, natural, talent.
Now that you have offered up these three excellent instructors, David — which one would you suggest if one were to have to choose only one? 🙂
Oh, we have tons more instructional videos to share, Gordon! I take a little bit from each one and I jump around to see what I understand now from one teacher will help me understand more in the future. The most thorough series I have is “Blues You Can Use” — it’s pretty strict and straightforward and I refer to it every day.
I think a good ear and sense of music matters the most or else there is no room for improvisation…
I agree. Redd has a magical ear that could reproduce and imitate precisely what his teacher played as an example each week. Instead of honoring that learning style, Redd’s teacher made fun of him by turning the sheet music upside down and asking Redd to play what was on the paper. Redd played it — from ear memory the week before — and his teacher told him of the intentional deception and dropped him as a student.
Redd sure sounds like a character, David. Watched him on You Tube videos and thought he sure was funny.
Redd is sort of a YouTube star, Anne. He’s a real person and he is fake in no way when he teaches.