Your First Blues Guitar Lesson
A blues guitar lesson would not be complete without a little bit of history behind the music itself. The blues is an older art form than most may think. I’m sure it is older than I know but I believe it got a good start in the south when slaves, who had horrible lives, sought out self expression and derived a musical medium from what they had remembered from their previous lives beyond. Therefore it is originally a sad music though the myriad of derivatives we now have may not lead an average person to think so. From the blues came jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock n’ roll, and inevitably pop music. It really is a mother of modern music in many ways.
The blues is really more of a feeling than anything else and so the musical theory behind it is quite simplistic, rudimentary. There is the saying that all you need is three chords and the lord but I’ve heard single notes that speak the blues as well if not better than more complex renditions.
The guitar is more associated with rock music however, back before the British invasion, before Charlie Christian stuck a magnet on his acoustic, the guitar was a prime blues instrument. I think mostly because of it’s availability and it’s portability rather than it being better suited than other instruments. However, the fact that you can play multiple notes, bend notes and use a slide makes the guitar very versatile and very well suited for the blues. Add a little crunch with a slightly over-driven amp and you get the harmonic squeaks and the sustain and well, damn, I’m in love with it for sure.
So enough of the why and where, lets get into the how. Here in the USA we were trained, whether we know it or not, to base everything we here off the framework of the major scale. Do, rae, me, fa, so, la, tea, do (not sure about the correct spellings here but you get the idea). 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. 1 and 8 being an octave. If you don’t know what I’m talking about go find a piano, find two white keys that are next to each other (with no black key in between) starting on the left one of those two white keys, playing from left to right play all the white keys until you hit the next set of two white keys together. That would be 8 notes, the first and the eighth are octaves, they sound similar, if you don’t hear that well, never mind. The thing to notice are the two places where there is NOT a black key between two white keys. These are what are known as half steps and they occur between the 3 an 4 as well as the 7 and 8. The others are called whole steps. This combination of whole and half steps are what result in the major scale. A major scale can be played in any key simply by applying that combination of whole and half steps, you just start on a different note.
musical notes
Looking at the image above, you will see that the first sequence of notes I talked about started on C and ended on C. It was the C major scale. So, if you played the same sequence or combination of whole and half steps starting on A you would be playing the A major scale… A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#, A. They are the same thing, only different.
Now lets discuss the major triad chord. It is called a triad because it consists of three notes. The 1 or Do, 3 or Me, and 5 or So. That’s all there is to that.
Now, the kicker, the blues chord progression. The blues is based off a combination of chords. Three chords actually. These chords are built from the major scale. Keeping it simple we’ll focus on how to construct 12 bar blues in C major. Recall that the major scale was made up of 8 notes that I numbered 1 through 8. we build chords off these 8 notes, using these notes. We only need three for the blues and they are built off the 1, the 4, and the 5. So our first chord is the C major triad which is the 1, 3, 5 of C or C, E, and G. Our second chord is build off the 4 which in C is F. The 1, 3, and 5 from F is F, A, and C. The third chord is build from the 5 or G and is G, B, and D. So our three chords, the 1, 4, and 5 in the key of C are C major, F major, and G major. CEG, FAC, and GBD.
Here is a basic blues style sequence of these chords called the 12 bar blues, play each of these chords 4 times…
C major, F major, C major, C major, C major, F major, C major, C major, G major, F major, C major, C major (repeat). You are now playing the blues and that was your first blues guitar lesson.
