In this 10-step blues guitar PDF, learn how to combine guitar licks and chords to play the blues when it's just you and your guitar. Plus, you'll learn a foolproof approach to improvising solos, and get tips on how to mix singing into your blues playing.
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Fun First Lesson Activities For Beginners
In this blues guitar PDF, you'll learn how to get started with playing the blues when it's just you and your guitar. Over the years, learning the blues has largely become a multiple-person affair — at the very least, someone usually needs to play the rhythm while someone else plays the solos.
But the thing is, the players of old mostly handled every facet of a blues tune by themselves. They sang it, played the rhythm, took all the solos and didn't have to rely on anyone else to be around for a song to sound complete.
Most of the time, you probably play guitar all by yourself, and if you go about it right, you don't need anyone else, either.
E Blues Turnarounds
Any type of solo guitar playing requires you to weave individual lines of music around chords. Most commonly, the blues requires you to know three chords, contingent on which key you're playing in. In the key of A, the three chords are A, D and E. You can use any variation of these chords, including the basic open ones you learned when you first picked up a guitar.
But when you're playing solo style, you also want to make use of chord shapes that allow your hand to move efficiently between the rhythm and lead playing, so that you can more intuitively do complex things.
One of the characteristics that makes blues so distinct is its rhythmic quality — it swings, ya dig? The swing rhythm comes from a 4/4 strum based around triplets, which is a music term meaning that instead of a beat divided into two, it's divided into three. Somewhat confusingly, triplet notes are considered eighth notes, and while you would usually count a four count that contains straight eighth notes as 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and, you count one with triplets as 1 triplet 2 triplet 3 triplet 4 triplet.
The Minor Blues Scale
The most common triplet-based, four-count strum pattern for blues is called swing eighths. The swing eighths pattern is played by hitting a downstroke on each number, playing nothing over the trip- syllables and then finishing off the sequence with an upstroke on the -let syllables. You also need to heavily accent the 2 and 4 beats of the count.
The most important part of the blues is nailing down the basic chord progression. Most people are unaware, but there are actually multiple progressions that can be used for the blues. Far and away, though, the most common one is called the 12 bar blues, so named because to get through the whole thing, you have to play 12 full four counts, called bars or measures, terms that are used interchangeably.
It can't be overstated that to be an effective blues player, you absolutely have to know the 12 bar blues like the back of your hand. Realistically, glossing over the chord progression is the number one reason people fail to gain traction with the blues.
Improving Your Fingerstyle Improvisation — Juan's World
To be any blues player worth your salt, it's not enough to simply know it. You have to know it to the point that you never make the mistake of getting lost in it. The reality is that everything blues players do is centered around a chord progression, and you can know all the fancy licks in the world, but if you stumble through the chords, it makes you look like a rookie.
One final thing to note about the 12 bar blues is that in it's purest state, the final bar is actually another A chord, but most of the time that measure is used to help send the progression back to the beginning and is called a turnaround measure. While there are many ways to play a turnaround, in this case, going to the E is the simplest and safest choice.
The quickest and most effective way to approach improvising blues licks is to learn the pentatonic scale, and then learn how to move it around and manipulate it for what you're doing. There are two versions of the pentatonic scale, the major and the minor. To play either version on the guitar, the patterns are the same, they're just played in different places. In total, there are five different patterns, called positions, and they all connect to each other. At this point, however, you'll only need to learn one, the first position the minor pentatonic in the key of Am.
Introduction To Bird Blues For Jazz Guitar
Once you've got a handle on the first position of the Am pentatonic, spend some time using it to improvise some guitar licks. Ideally, guitar licks work like a story: they have a starting point, a middle section and an end.
The starting point can really be any note in the scale you want, and the middle section could be any collection of notes you want. But the best place to end is on the root note.
Now, you don't have to finish every single line on the root, but it's the one place that will give you a 100%, full sense of completion, so it's good to use it when you want to communicate that something has come to an end.
Blues Jazz Guitar Walking Bass And Improvisation With Tabs
As you string together licks — also known colloquially as lines — another thing you'll want to consider is that due to the guitar's wide range in sound, it's best to use the notes on particular strings for specific purposes.
For the most part, you'll want to center your licks around the notes on the D and G strings. These are your bread and butter notes. When you really want something to stand out, use the notes on the B and E strings. These notes are best played mostly as double stops, which give your licks a little more weight.
The notes on the low strings, E and A, are best used to transition to and from a chord. They'll sound too muddy to stay there for too long.
Blues Guitar Rhythm Techniques
While the Am pentatonic scale can help jumpstart your blues playing, it's kind of overkill when it comes to blue notes. In general, blue notes have more impact when they contrast some of the more vanilla notes in the key. So, a better scale to use as a foundation for improvisation in the key of A is really A major pentatonic, which can be found by moving the Am pentatonic pattern three frets back. Now, your index finger starts the pattern on fret 2.
Mostly, you can approach improvising in the major pentatonic as you would the minor — you'll still want to make good use of double stops and also want to use each string set for their appropriate purposes.
But there are a couple things you can do in the major that can take your playing up a notch. First, you might notice that a basic open A chord covers a few scale notes on fret two.
Jazz Blues Comping Guitar
By playing this chord instead as a three-note barre chord with your index finger, you can play it like a chord on beat 1, and also use it like an anchored double stop for the guitar lick. From there, you can attack other notes in the scale while never leaving the chord position, which makes switching between rhythm and lead as intuitive as it gets.
There are also two important blue notes that can be mixed in to your licks that can give you a bluesy sound without going overboard. The flat seven note (b7), can be found on the fifth fret of the D string and the flat third (b3), which is considered the ultimate blue note, can be found in two places: on the A string of the third fret and G string of the fifth fret.
Any of these notes can be used in addition to the other notes in the major pentatonic. While there are other places within the pattern to find these blue notes, these instances are the easiest to use from the anchored A chord.
How To Play The Blues
In every type of music, your default scale for creating guitar licks should be the major pentatonic scale, and realistically, save for special circumstances, you should avoid using the minor pentatonic all together.
The blues, of course, would be considered a special circumstance. Because of the music theory behind it, the minor pentatonic has a lot of blue notes that fit well into the style.
But rather than overdo it by using the minor pentatonic exclusively, it's better to take advantage of it by having a solid approach. At this point, it should be noted that like anything else in music, the blues can be transposed across all
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