Blues Guitar
Play the the Blues – Guitar Tutorial!
Blues Guitar is a great way to get started with friends. Anytime your at a jam you will here Lets Play Blues in A for example. Its universal starting point for any blues guitarist and everyone else for sure. It can be your first song or progression to learn, the I,IV,V progression.
This is the 1,4,5 chords in any key. Its a lot of fun especially with friends just to break the ice before moving on to more elaborate blues for guitar progressions. If your the new guitarist and has not yet learnt to solo or you don’t have an interest in soloing then your the rhythm player.
Very often when a group of musicians get together for a jam the blues progression is the first point they start at. Its a 1-4-5 progression. In the key of C this is the chords we learnt in the previous lesson which were:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Key of C : C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim
Number: 1 4 5
Chord: C F G
You can see this will be a happy blues as all the chords are Major or happy sounding chords. There are different blues progressions but the beginners play 12 Bar blues as a beginning. There are 8 bar blues as well as turn a around to learn. A turnaround is a short progression that takes you back to the beginning of the progression easily. We will get to these as well as adding the shuffle which will make the blues progression sound more blues/rock in a future lesson. Lets get one step at a time and get changing our chords smoothly first.
12 Bar Blues
There are a few different types of blues for guitar progressions but the most popular is the 12 Bar Blues. A bar of music is 4 beats. Simply you play a chord 4 times per bar and you have to count 12 bars.
There are some small changes to get the progression sounding more bluesy but lets just get the chords in order and have you count your way through the 12 Bar progression. The format remains the same in all keys.
If someone says ok, lets play a 12 bar in C then its C – F – G. The key is denoted by the first chord.
The Progression – Format C Major Blues
Blues in “C”.
C C C C – C C C C – C C C C – C C C C
F F F F – F F F F – C C C C – C C C C
G G G G – F F F F – C C C C – C C C C
In the diagram above you can see there are 12 groups of chords. C gets played 12 time which is 4 bar’s then F is played for 2 Bar’s. The progression then returns to C for another 2 bar’s then F for 1 bar then finally C for 2 Bar’s.
You will never get bored with hammering out Blues for Guitar buddies anywhere you go. Its a universal language among budding lead guitarists because its a known formula. Knowing this beginning will lead to playing a shuffle which we will look at soon and you will be able to play with anyone.
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