Blues Summit: Study Guitar With Buddy Guy

Seems like there's a bluesy flavour on the blog this week. After yesterday's blues chord progressions lesson for budding blues players, here's a bit of news for intermediate and advanced blues players.

The National Guitar Workshop has announced its Blues Summit courses in Chicago, Illinois this July. Not only do you get to choose from blues guitar, bass or drums lessons with National Guitar Workshop instructors, but none other than Buddy Guy himself will be the guest artist.

For any blues fan living in the area it sound like an opportunity not to miss.


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Blues Chord Progressions, An Introduction

The 12 bar blues chord progression is the foundation of blues rhythm guitar. This progression is used in countless blues songs so if you want to play blues guitar you'd better learn it. This lesson shows you the basic 12 bar blues progression and three common variations you can play in any key.

Blues Chords

Blues chord progressions most often use dominant chords which are a standard major chord with an added flatted 7th note, this note is found two frets below the chord's root. Twelve bar blues chord progressions use three dominant chords, these are the I, IV and V chords of the song's key. Here are some examples.

In the key of E the I, IV, V chords are E, A, B.
In the key of A the I, IV, V chords are A, D, E.
In the key of G the I, IV, V chords are G, C, D.

Dominant chords can often be played on the guitar by removing one finger that plays the root note of the chord to play the dominant 7th note two frets below it. You can see this in the E7 and A7 chord shapes below.



Get the idea? Good, now let's take a look at the 12 bar blues progression using those chords.

12 Bar Blues

Below is the chord grid for the standard twelve bar blues.



You can see that the progression starts with four bars of the I chord, in this example E7. This is followed by two bars of the IV chord, A7, then another two bars on the I, E7. The last four bars are referred to as the turnaround and use one bar on the V chord, one bar on the IV and finally two bars on the I chord.

The progression then starts back at the I chord in the first of the twelve bars again. It's easy to see where the progression gets its name, it has 12 bars which are repeated for the length of a song.

The 12 bar blues progression is the foundation of countless blues songs. You will easily learn to recognize it if you listen to plenty of blues songs and pay attention to the sound of the chords as they go by.

12 Bar Blues Variations

There are two very common variations to the basic 12 bar form that we're going to take a short look at here. You should learn these two variations to play more popular blues songs or if you want to participate in blues jams with other musicians.

The first variation involves a change in bar two of the 12 bar blues, you play the IV chord in place of the I chord to give the progression shown below.



The second variation replaces the I chord in the twelfth bar with a V chord. Play this variation and I'm sure you'll instantly recognize it. It is a characteristic blues sound you have heard in countless blues performances, it relaunches the song into the next round of 12 bars.



Now you've learned the two variations separately, you should also practice playing the 12 bar blues progression with both variations: play the IV chord in bar two and the five chord in bar twelve. That gives you four 12 bar blues chord progressions to practice, let's recap them here:

1. The basic 12 bar blues progression
2. IV chord in bar 2 variation
3. V chord in bar 12 variation
4. IV and V chord variation

Learn and memorize these four 12 bar blues progressions on your guitar and you will be well on your way to playing blues rhythm guitar. Learn and practice the progressions in as many keys as you can and you'll be amazed how many blues songs you can play. Time to pick up your guitar and start practicing...

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Exercise to Change Chords Quickly

Learning how to change chords, quickly, is one of the biggest challenges you face as you learn guitar. In the lesson Change Chords Quickly Dan Cross teaches one of the very important secrets of smooth and accurate chord changes.

Whatever your playing level, you'll find the exercises described in this post useful if you have trouble changing chords smoothly.

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3 Blues Guitar Soloing Secrets

Running up and down a pentatonic scale is an easy way to get started playing blues guitar solos, but you soon realize that there's more to it than that to create the sounds of blues players you listen to. Here are three secrets to help you extend your pentatonic skills and sound more like your blues guitar heroes.

Photo hart_curt.

Minor and Major

Instead of running around minor or major pentatonic positions, get into the habit of using both.

Many blues players use a mixture of both the minor and major scales as well as the blues scale. This one secret will give your solos a whole new dimension.

An easy way to do this is to use the pentatonic major scale over the I chord, and switch to the pentatonic minor on the IV and V chords. Pop on your favourite blues jam track and try this out.

If you play the major scale over the IV chord you'll notice that it sounds kind of odd. The major third tone is the major seventh of the IV chord and clashes with the chord's dominant seventh note. The minor third hits that dominant seventh and sounds way better.

Play Fewer Notes

A big mistake lots of novice blues soloists make is to play too many notes. Once you've learned the pentatonic or blues scales you're usually eager to show off your knowledge by trying to go as fast as you can and play as many notes as possible in the least possible time.

Your licks and solos can be made much more effective, though, by limiting the notes you play, and their quantity. To develop this skill select at most three or four notes from the available scales and practice licks and whole solos with only those notes.

Throw In Some Chords

You can improve your solos by developing your skill with the blues scales, but another way to get ahead fast is to throw in a few chords from time to time.

As with any other trick, the skill here is not to overdo it. Don't start playing chords on every bar, but punctuate your single note licks with chords or chord fragments from time to time and you'll take your solos to new heights.

Of course, the other important trick with this technique is to hit the right chord. You can practice this by firing off one, two or four bar licks and ending each one by hitting the right chord for that bar. Again, use a jam track, or record a simple chord backing, so your mistakes will stand out.

Bonus: Getting Chromatic

Here's a bonus secret for you, you don't have to stick to the scales all the time. Throwing in out of scale notes builds tension in your solos that you release by ending on a scale tone.

Practice linking notes of the scale with chromatic runs. This technique works well as a lead in to new phrases. You can take the tension to its maximum by using out of time rhythms too.

The basic ingredients of blues guitar solos are quite simple to learn, the pentatonic scale positions can be learned and memorized relatively easily and quickly. But don't stop there, there are plenty of different ways to apply them to create more interesting sounds. These three secrets will give you a good start, but keep on the look out for more to build your bag of blues solo tricks.

Guitar article writing: Gary Fletcher writes quality, original content for your guitar web sites. Discover guitar writing services for web sites, blogs and newsletters. Visit http://www.writescribe.com/guitar to learn more.


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Funking It With Multilayered Rhythms

I was perusing the funk section of Gibson's online video lessons the other day when I came across a cool funk guitar lesson from our friends over at the Rock House.

In this lesson Leo Nocentelli, legendary guitarist of the Meters, shows you how he builds a funky rhythm from four "simple" pieces. Check out this lesson and I promise your guitar will be dancing for days. One word of warning, it's not for beginners, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the funky guitar anyway.

Check out the lesson, The Secrets of Funk, Using It and Fusing It, on Gibson's lessons site.

You can get more information on the DVD from which this lesson is taken on the product site, or get your copy of The Secrets of Funk from Amazon.




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Better Guitar: Meet Other Musicians

Playing with other guitarists and musicians is a time proven way to make your guitar playing better. Rock House Blog recently published seven ideas to help you find other musicians to play with. Pick one or two and find yourself some musical partners now.

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5 Best Guitar Solos

Do you have a favourite guitar solo? You know, the kind that makes your bones tingle, your hair stand up on end, your spine shudder, and just has you reaching for your guitar wishing you could play it?

There are a lot of guitar solos out there, and choosing a favourite is not an easy task. I've been trying to come up with a list of five favourites of mine for a little while now, but I just can't bring myself to settle on a top five that doesn't change a few minutes later.

I'd almost given up on the idea, but then I thought, why not let you have a go, maybe you can do better?

Here's an opportunity for you to contribute to the site. I'm throwing open the comments section for your personal lists of best guitar solos, so don't be shy, click the "Post a comment" link down there and let us know which solo makes you most want to play, and why.

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Beginner Guitar Chords - Spice 'Em Up

Continuing this week's theme of spicing up simple open chord songs, here's a video lesson from Next Level Guitar showing you some neat moves.

Watch the video to learn how you can create little fills around your basic open chord shapes. These are based on sus chords, a common device in many rock songs.



Watch the guitar lesson.

See more video lessons from Next Level Guitar.

Guitar article writing: Gary Fletcher writes quality, original content for your guitar web sites. Discover guitar writing services for web sites, blogs and newsletters. Visit http://www.writescribe.com/guitar to learn more.


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3 Ways to Spice Up Beginner Chords

Your first steps on guitar usually involve strumming simple open chord arrangements of songs. This can be quite satisfying, but you'll soon want to do better. Here are three picking techniques that offer you a step by step route to build your simple chords, spice up your accompaniments, and develop some finger agility.

The three techniques shown here all involve playing with the bass notes of the chords. In order of increasing technical difficulty you will learn about:

1. Alternating bass
2. Bass hammers
3. Bass runs


Photo tuppus.

1. Alternating Bass

Use alternating bass with a simple bass-strum pattern to give your songs a jaunty swing. You play a bass note on the first and third beat and strum the chord on beats two and four.

There are two kinds of bass strum that are easy to play with open guitar chords.

On A, D or E chords you can easily alternate between the root of the chord and its fifth. The fifth note is found on the string below the root, two frets up, or on the open string above the root (not available for the E chord).

For example, on an A major chord you pick the root (A) on the open fifth string on beat one, and the fifth (E) on either the fourth string second fret or the open sixth string on beat three.

On C and G chords it's a little harder to play the fifth. You can play it on the C chord by changing your fingering to hold down the third fret of the sixth string and play the fifth (G) note there. On the G chord you can play the fifth on the open D string. This takes a little practice to accurately skip over the fifth string in between.

As an easier alternative on G and C is to play the third of the chord instead. This note is found one string and one fret down from the root; second fret of the fourth string on C major, second fret fifth string on G.

2. Bass Hammers

Once you've got the hang of alternating bass you can extend it to play bass hammers. You use the same fretted notes as for alternating bass, but hammer a finger onto them instead of playing them straight. Hammer onto either the fifth (A, D, or E chords) or the third (C and G).

Use the finger that normally frets these notes and try to move only that finger, lifting it off the bass note and hammering onto it while holding the other notes of the chord. It takes a little practice to move only the desired finger.

Practice this technique with different timing. You can hammer down very quickly, sounding only a brief "ghost" note on the open string, or let it sound longer and hammer down at the last instant before strumming the chord.

3. Bass Runs

A little more complicated, the bass run offers you more possibilities to create interesting sounding accompaniments. The bass run is a series of notes on the bass strings leading up to a chord change. You can use notes from either the major scale of the key the song is in, or use a chromatic scale moving one fret at a time.

Your bass run should finish on a note that leads to the new chord. Here are three common leading notes you can use: walk up to the seventh of the new chord, walk down to its second, or walk up or down to its fifth.

You can use quarter notes, eighths, triplets, or a mixture to create interesting rhythm patterns for your bass runs. Experiment with different timings to get a feel for their effect and choose your favourites.

Now you know three ways to get more out of your beginner guitar chords and give simple open chord song arrangements some added sparkle. Let's review them here as a reminder.

1. Alternating bass - add some swing to your chord accompaniments.
2. Bass hammers – adding more emphasis to bass notes.
3. Bass runs – to emphasise chord movement.

If you want to improve your open chord playing pick a simple three chord song you know and try out these techniques on it. Leave a comment to let us know how you get on applying them.

Guitar article writing: Gary Fletcher writes quality, original content for your guitar web sites. Discover guitar writing services for web sites, blogs and newsletters. Visit http://www.writescribe.com/guitar to learn more.


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Bass Run Tricks on I-vi-IV-ii Chord Progression

This week's lesson continues our series of lessons showing you how to play bass runs over open chords. In previous lessons we saw how to create bass runs using chromatic movement or the major scale.

This week we're going to look at a progression that uses minor chords in the key of G. This progression also introduces a new bass run approach and rhythm pattern that will give your bass runs lots of forward moving feeling.

First up, let's take a look at the example. The tab below shows an eight bar progression in G that could be a song verse. The progression starts on the I, G, chord with a simple bass-strum pattern that is used on the chords throughout.



In the second bar of G you play the bass run to lead to the minor vi chord, Em in this case.

Now, the root E note can be found on the open sixth string below the root of the G chord, so we could simply walk down to it following a chromatic or major scale pattern. Instead, we use a bass run that walks up the G major scale to the B note on the fifth string. This B note is the fifth degree of the Em chord, and creates a great lead-in to the root note of the chord.

Play the notes of this run to hear how the movement sounds. Do you hear how that fifth note seems to want to move to the chord root that follows it?

The example also uses a rhythm trick so this this run creates even more movement. Instead of playing evenly spaced bass notes, we've broken the run into a pair of eighth notes and a quarter note.

This combination of using the new chord's fifth note as a target and the rhythmic variation really emphasises the chord movement and lifts the song pattern.

For the rest of the bar and the start of the next we continue the bass strum pattern, before performing a new bass run to the IV chord, C major. Here again we use the C chord's fifth note to lead into the new chord.

To do this we play the G major scale run on the sixth string to finish on the G note. This resolves to the root note of the C chord on the next beat, as we start bar five.

We play the by now familiar bass-strum pattern over the C chord before launching into a new bass run to the Am chord. We repeat our fifth note trick again, this time walking back down the G major scale to the E note on the open sixth string.

Our final bass run takes us along the G major scale to its fifth note, D, to resolve back to our I chord root. We're now back where we started, ready to continue through the progression for as long as you want.

In previous lessons you learned how to lead into the new chord's root note from a fret or two above or below it. You'll find that using the fifth note to lead to the root, like this example does, gives your bass runs a whole new sound and feel.

More bass run lessons from Not Playing Guitar for you to enjoy.

• Beginner Guitar Open Chord Bass Runs
• Open G and C Chord Chromatic Bass Run
• Open Chord Major Scale Bass Runs
• G and C Chord Major Scale Bass Runs
• Bass Run on I-IV-V Chord Progression
  

Guitar article writing: Gary Fletcher writes quality, original content for your guitar web sites. Discover guitar writing services for web sites, blogs and newsletters. Visit http://www.writescribe.com/guitar to learn more.

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Do Guitar Books Have A Future?

Computers and the internet are changing reading and learning habits and guitar playing is one skill that benefits hugely from these new formats. Multi-media guitar lessons using sound, video or computer software have many advantages compared to printed notation in books or magazines.

More and more guitar tuition products use multi-media or are entirely based on video, audio or software media. Does this spell the end of guitar books and magazines?

Photo OctopusHat.

Video and software have numerous strong points. With a video, for example, you can see and copy the instructor without the need to learn complex music notation. This removes a big hurdle for many beginners and makes it easier for them to get started.

Of course, a real live music teacher can also show you how to play like this. But have you ever tried to find a teacher who'll come to your house at 10 o'clock at night, when you're ready to practice? Multimedia training can be viewed whenever you like, and as many times as you like, all without having to leave your home. This is another big plus for many learners.

Now some might argue that these advantages lead to laziness and create students lacking in fundamentals. This might be true in part, but I think that the advantages far outweigh the problems.

Serious students will eventually get around to learning to think for themselves, to read music, and any other skills they'll need. The rest who just want to have a little fun without too much personal investment have more possibilities to learn easily.

But books might not be quite finished yet, I think they have some advantages of their own.

For one thing, they are very portable. You don't need to be tied in front of a computer or TV as you practice – a factor not to neglect for the many of us who prefer to play guitar rather than be a TV addict. Books make it easy to practice and learn wherever you go with your lesson book tucked into your guitar bag or case.

The physical layout of books is also a great help. They are organized into chapters and sections that are physically related to one another. This in turn creates a similar organization of the knowledge in your mind.

For example, I have a couple of blues books and their organization into chapters on blues rhythm playing and chords, different soloing techniques, turnarounds and endings, and so on, provides an instant framework into which I fit my blues knowledge.

This physical layout helps us to construct a mental map of the material. This map is often harder to build with video material whose structure may be less obvious.

Working with books also means you are more or less obliged to learn to read music and tab. While it's perfectly possible to learn to play guitar without reading music, it's certainly useful. The ability to read tab, sheet music and other charts makes it quite easy for you to access the thousands of songs that are notated in this way.

Finally, even if you do use video or software as part of your guitar learning, books still provide a useful different perspective. You learn things in different ways and the book can give you insights that you'd miss if you only watch video - and vice versa of course.

For all these reasons I think that books and writing still have a role to play in guitar learning for a while to come. What about you?

Guitar article writing: Gary Fletcher writes quality, original content for your guitar web sites. Discover guitar writing services for web sites, blogs and newsletters. Visit http://www.writescribe.com/guitar to learn more.

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Easy Beginner Blues Chords

This article shows beginner guitar players the 12 bar blues progression and how to play it with simple open position blues chords. Blues guitar is great fun to play. This article shows you the simple chords and basic blues song structure you can use to play many thousands of songs.

Learning to play the blues is not only great fun, it also gives you valuable skills you can use in other styles such as rock, soul, R&B, funk and jazz. Blues guitar uses distinctive sounding chords called dominant 7th chords. These are denoted by the number 7 following the chord name.

The dominant 7th chord is simply a normal major or minor chord with a 7th note two frets below the root note added. For example, you add a D note to an E major chord to form an E7, a G note to an A chord gives you A7, and so on.

You can add the 7th note to many chords by finding a root note and changing the fingering to play the note two frets below it. The chord diagrams below show you easy open blues chords in the key of A major.

E7            A7                D7
e 0|---|---|  0|---|---|---|    |---|-3-|
B 0|---|---|   |---|-2-|---|    |-1-|---|
G  |-1-|---|  0|---|---|---|    |---|-2-|
D 0|---|---|   |---|-1-|---|   0|---|---|
A  |---|-2-|  0|---|---|---|   x|---|---|
E 0|---|---|  x|---|---|---|   x|---|---|

You can try to find the dominant 7th note for other open chords you know. Simply find a string where the root note occurs and change fingering to play the note two frets lower on that string. Alternatively, find a string where the 5th note of the chord occurs and play the note three frets up from it. Remember that these notes occur two or even three times in open chord forms.

Now you know how to play simple blues chords in open positions let's look at how they are used in songs.


Most blues songs use a 12 bar chord progression that is quite easy to learn. Once you master this progression you'll be able to play very many blues songs with it.

The blues progression uses chords based on the first, fourth and fifth scale degrees. These are commonly known as the I, IV and V chords. Here is the 12 bar blues progression in the key of A major, the I, IV, V chords are A7, D7 and E7 respectively.

|  A7  |  A7  |  A7 | A7  |  D7  | D7  |
|  A7  |  A7  | E7  | D7  |  A7  | E7  |

As you learn and memorize this progression you should aim to memorize the chord changes in terms of I, IV and V chords. If you do this then it will be easy to play the blues in a variety of keys.

You can play the blues in four popular keys – A, E, D and G - with only five chords. The table below shows the I, IV and V chords for these four major keys commonly played on the guitar.

Key of E: E7 (I), A7 (IV), B7 (V)
Key of A: A7 (I), D7 (IV), E7 (V)
Key of D: D7 (I), G7 (IV), A7 (V)
Key of G: G7 (I), C7 (IV), D7 (V)

Practice the chord forms one key at a time and memorize the 12 bar blues progression. With these two simple pieces of knowledge you can have fun playing along to many blues songs or join in at your local blues jam.

More blues guitar lessons from Not Playing Guitar

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Acoustic Blues Rhythm Guitar Lesson

Like the blues? You'll love today's blues video lesson brought to you courtesy of the nice folks at Next Level Guitar.

In this lesson you'll learn a rhythm technique made famous by ZZ Top. I'm sure you've heard this blues guitar sound before but it's most often associated with the electric guitar. This video shows yet again that there's more to acoustic blues than fingerstyle playing. Who needs electricity?



View acoustic blues rhythm lesson.

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More Beginner Guitar Chords

Learning to strum chords is one of the easiest ways to start playing guitar. It's also satisfying because you can learn to strum along to quite a lot of songs once you get the hang of three or more chords.

Be warned, though, it might take you a while to learn those first chords. Depending upon the amount of practice time you have it could take anywhere from a week or so to a couple of months to get a reasonable sound out of your first two or three chords.

The best approach is to learn one chord at a time and practice a little each day. Your fingers will learn faster if you give them a daily workout rather than saving up for long sessions at the weekend.

Start learning with the major chords listed below. Once you've learned the A, D and E chords you can start to play songs with them.

D major
G major
C major
A major
E major

If you find these too hard to start with, here's a lesson with some one finger beginner guitar chords you might try.

Learn acoustic guitar with 153 step by step video lessons, acoustic jam tracks, ear training and music reading software. From beginner through to advanced player with Jamorama Acoustic complete learning system.

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