Search - Dave Celentano: Blues Masters by the Bar on DVD

Good licks, bad organization, ugly navigation

Flem Snopes | California USA | 07/30/2009

(2 out of 5 stars)

"The good: Dave Celentano is an engaging teacher who plays and demonstrates each lick very well.

The bad: the organization of the DVD leaves a lot to be desired. The DVD's purpose is to present blues licks that work over each portion of the blues progression, and while it accomplishes this, it would have been a lot more useful if there were a convenient way you could take individual licks by a particular artist and put them together into a complete solo, or better yet, if the DVD did this for you and presented them at the end. Unfortunately, each artist's individual licks don't necessarily add up to a cohesive solo, so even if you wanted to patch one together, you probably couldn't. Also, not all the artists appear in every section. For example, Eric Clapton is completely missing from the section on measures three and four.

Finally, the ugly: navigation on the DVD really, really stinks. It's impossible to see the introduction, for example, by choosing it from a menu. Instead, you have to choose Play All, which takes you through the tuning-your-guitar section, then on to the introduction, then into the first section of instruction; if you want to go back and review the intro, forget it. Similarly, it's really difficult to navigate to a particular set of licks (or two-bar section of the progression); you have to skip forward through two-bar section after section until you find the part you want. This should be done through a fully-developed menu system, but it's not. To recap, the individual licks are fine and Celentano does a good job, but the organization and navigation are dismal."