Brief Description: Teaches what a blues progression is and how to get started playing blues lead guitar. If you want to make up your own lead riffs instead of spending the rest of your guitar playing days copying someone elses, this is the lesson for you! Based on the book by William Bay titled, "Basic Rock Blues Guitar Method" from Mel Bay Publishing. Used with permission. 272K. (Download time, about 1 minute on a 56K dial-up)
This lesson is available for members
only. You can purchase a Membership,
or login
if you are already a Member. If you have recently signed up for
a membership log in and click the flashing text that says, "finish
membership."
Each lesson contains the following sections:
• INFO: The Info page gives you valuable, additional information
on each lesson (this is the information shown below).
• PLAY ALONG: The Play Along feature gives you background
tracks to practice with.
• TAB/NOTATION: A complete Tab/Notation section is provided
for each lesson.
• HANDS: A Hands section provides actual video or a Flash
animation of the Hand movement required for the lesson.
• MAIN TUTORIAL: The Main Turorial of the lesson allows
you to step through each fingering of the lesson one at a time.
THE BLUES PROGRESSION
The first thing you should do is familiarize yourself with the Basic Blues Song. It is a standard progression of chord changes 12 measures long. Let me emphasize that you can "study" the progression as much as you want and it won't really "sink in" until you've listened to its unique sound several times. Once you are familiar with the sound and repetitive pattern of the "Basic Blues Song", this lesson will be much easier to grasp. The good news is that you'll hear it several times in this lesson so jump right in there and get started. Below is the pattern of chord changes used in the standard blues song.
GETTING THE FEEL OF THINGS
Most of the Blues you'll hear in the Rock Blues styles will be based on 2 basic rhythm patterns known as the SHUFFLE and the STRAIGHT rhythm. These are many times referred to by blues players as the shuffle or the straight "feel." The reason for this is that there is a definite underlying pulse or "feel" unique to both. Let's analyze the SHUFFLE feel first.
THE SHUFFLE FEEL
When you break down the specific rhythm in the Shuffle you'll discover that for every single beat there is an underlying pulse of three beats. Take a look at the graphic below.
If you count slowly and steadily- One, Two, Three, Four and then replace each one of those steady counts with three equally divided notes, you are counting triplets. There are several ways to verbally count triplets, such as Trip-o-let, Trip-o-let, etc., or simply 1-2-3 1-2-3, etc., or Am-ster-dam Am-ster-dam, etc.. Any three-syllable word will do. Take a look at the interactive example below to see exactly how this works. Notice the quarter-notes on the top staff and the 8th-note triplets below. If you click the clock, you'll see and hear how this notation is counted and played.
With each tick of the clock the cursor advances 3 times. Each tick of the clock is one full beat. There are 3 equally divided triplet counts for every quarter note or beat.
THE STRAIGHT FEEL
Let's contrast the shuffle "feel" with the straight feel followed by an example of a typical blues song played both ways. First look at the straight rhythm example below. Notice that rather than being divided in three's, the beat is divided in two's. This is represented by the quarter and eighth notes below.
Ok, so you're sick of hearing the E note over and over. Here are 2 audio samples of the one chord progression played with the SHUFFLE or triplet feel and then played with the STRAIGHT feel. Click the "STRAIGHT" button to hear a sample of the straight feel. Click it again to stop. Click the "SHUFFLE" button to hear a short sample of the shuffle feel. Click it again to stop.
"The More You Learn, the Easier it is to Learn More!"
