Stefan Grossman Lesson: Playing Country Blues in Vestapol Tuning

With this lesson, we welcome Stefan Grossman as a Pure Guitar contributor. Stefan is one of these rare players who’s equally renowned as a very fine acoustic guitarist and as a teacher. He owns and operates Stefan Grossman’s Guitar Workshop and Vestapol Videos, which are unsurpassed sources for both acoustic blues video lessons and archival films of Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, Dave Van Ronk, Brownie McGhee, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, John Renbourn, Elizabeth Cotten, Muddy Waters, and many others. Check out his catalog: guitarvideos.com

Stefan’s first lesson for us ties in with our article “Blues Origins: ‘Spanish Fandango’ and ‘Sebastopol’”. As Stefan notes, “Open tunings have always been an integral part of the country blues guitar tradition. In this approach the guitar is tuned to a full chord. Most blues players began playing the guitar in an open tuning as it made playing much easier yet gave the guitar a much stronger and richer sound. For a minimum of effort you can produce a maximum of sound, rhythm and music. The most popular country blues tunings were the open-G tuning, also called Spanish tuning, and the open-D tuning, also called Vestapol tuning. Also used by a few Delta guitarists such as Skip James and Bukka White was the crossnote tuning where your guitar is tuned to an open-Em chord. In this lesson we will explore open D with some exciting fingerstyle blues arrangements.”