As I travel through the years, digging up various Delta blues guitarists from Memphis, Tennessee through Biloxi, Mississippi, I can’t help but notice the single characteristic that each of these guitarists share; that being their Blues Heart. While learning the blues (Pentatonic) scales, chords and chord progressions, (8-bar, 12-bar and 16-bar); I’ve realized that without playing the music and having a Blues Heart (or some call it Blues Soul), it just sounds like another rock-n’-roll tune played fast or slow.
by Bob Janicki (Musician By Night)
1. 5 Positions of the Minor Pentatonic Scale:
The minor pentatonic scale is a much used scale by musicians in many genres, from blues to rock, and if you are just starting to learn soloing and how to improvise, learning the 5 positions of the minor pentatonic scale will be invaluable to your efforts.
I always recommend that my students learn the minor pentatonic scale forms as a first step in learning improvisation. You probably know the first form already, which can, by itself, be used to make up nice sounding riffs and improvised solos. But learning the other 4, altogether 5 minor pentatonic scale positions will allow you to move along the fretboard to wherever you want, whenever you want, and produce some truly outstanding solos.
Don’t take my word for it, listen to BB King albums, Clapton songs, and a bunch of other artists. They all use the various shapes of the minor pentatonic, so should you. Here are the positions of the minor pentatonic:
The above diagram shows the 5 positions of the minor pentatonic in the key of E. After shape 5, the patterns would start over from shape 1.
There are a couple of key points to take away here:
- It’s very important to note that the above diagram could be moved anywhere on the fretboard, resulting in a minor pentatonic scale of a different key.
- For example, if the root note of the 1st shape would start at fret 5, so in essence, the entire diagram would be moved over by 5 frets, you would be in the key of E, since the root note is E.
- Notice also how all of the root notes (gray dots) are on note E.
- Shape 2 starts off as the end of shape 1, shape 3 starts off at the end of shape 2, and so on. You can now see how the entire scale is inter-connected.
How would you go about learning the positions of the minor pentatonic?
- Learn each shape separately at first here: 5 minor pentatonic scale positions
- Make sure you concentrate on remembering the root notes in all of the shapes.
- Move the shapes to different places over the neck of the guitar, just to get a feel for the sound of the scale in different keys.
- Learn to connect and move in between the shapes.
- Start playing the scale along with jam tracks, this is very important!
2. Learning Blues Guitar
If you like listening to blues, if you like the style of BB King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and others, you’ll be happy to hear that learning to play blues guitar is one of the easiest specialized genres to grasp hold of quickly. Once you reach an intermediate level of expertise, you’ll be able to play the blues without any problems after taking some blues guitar lessons.
Are you surprised? Most people are! The fact is that blues is truly one of the easiest of genres to master on the guitar. You don’t need to play it super fast, the techniques are not overly complicated, and you don’t need to have a PhD in music theory. So what makes it great? The thing that makes the blues one of the most liked genres is the style! You digin’ me baby? Blues players are just plain cool and fun to watch. They get totally tangled up in their music, each note giving them jitters, which they express very physically as well.
So, if you are ready to give yourself over to the blues, here is what you need to do to learn to play blues guitar:
- You’ll already need to be comfortable with the fundamentals of playing the guitar, so basically the things we teach in our beginner guitar lessons. By this, I mean the following:
- Know how to form chords and be able to switch easily between them.
- Be able to play barre and power chords.
- Be familiar with solo guitar techniques: hammer on, pull off, string bending, string sliding, vibrato.
- Have basic knowledge of scales and fret intervals.
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- Listen to blues players at their best. If you don’t really know where to start, check out some of the blues artists that I’ve covered so far as well as the photos of blues artists I have posted on my Blogsite and download a couple of their tracks or full CD’s and start listening to them over and over again.
- With the above, you can start learning blues specific guitar aspects and techniques:
- The 5 pentatonic scale positions and the blues note.
- The theory behind the 12 bar blues.
- Refine your lead guitar skills, especially the vibrato, string sliding and bending.
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Keep in mind that it’s not the technical aspects of playing the blues, since once you know a couple of scale positions, chords, and lead guitar techniques, you will be able to improvise to backing tracks. It’s the soul you need to feel the notes, and become one with the guitar to be able to truly express yourself with the blues.
3. Blues Guitar Techniques
The blues is one of my favorite genres on guitar, I teach it to students all the time. Why? Because it’s easy and loads of fun. If you’re at an intermediate level, you’re already at a stage where you can play astonishing blues riffs and solos like BB himself if you know some basic blues guitar techniques.
And you know what, these blues techniques are mostly basic guitar techniques that you are probably familiar with already. If you can already play some of the more complicated songs in the guitar song lessons section of the site, you are at the stage where you might consider getting some blues guitar lessons, since you are already at the level where you could be playing the blues.
But enough rambling, here are the guitar techniques you’ll need to master if you want to play blues:
- Bending to and from notes: Blues uses LOTS of string bending, you’ll need to practice that a lot. It’s tough on your fingertips at first, but it’ll all be easier with time. When you’re playing slow blues, you’ll be bending up to the note you are aiming for a bit slowly, thus giving it the expressive feel that is very typical of blues.
- Shake the string: In other words, vibrato. Use it, and use it a lot when playing the blues. The vibrato might just be the single most expressive technique in your arsenal.
- Sliding: Blues guitarists don’t just simply pluck a note, they sometimes slide into it. Sliding into notes is very typical in blues as well, and just adds character and a bluesy feel to the riff.
- Slurring: This is a technique that is utilized mostly in blues, and not in other genres. When slur a note, you bend it just slightly, right before plucking a new note. Slurs are actually one of the most characteristic sounds of blues, so using them is imperative.
- Phrasing the blues: Blues players enjoy a sort of rhythmic liberty in the sense that they allow certain notes to be played off rhythm. For example, when a blues guitarist enters, he will typically start a half beat after the bar starts.
The techniques required for playing blues guitar are quite easy, yet the challenge is using them expressively. A vibrato is not just a vibrato in blues, it’s an expression of your soul, along with all the other techniques above.
Here's a good tip if you want to start playing blues:
Start listening to as much blues guitar music as possible and get familiar with it’s flavor and overall aspects of the rhythm and lead guitar roles in each type of blues song; 8 bar, 12 bar, fast, slow, blues-rock, etc..
4. 12-Bar Blues Guitar Lesson
Learning to play blues guitar is awesome, since it’s one of the easiest genres to master on the guitar. Because of this, and the fact that playing the blues is fun and expressive, many beginner-intermediate guitarists choose to learn the blues. And yes, it is possible at an early stage.
To start playing the blues, one of the most fundamental things you’ll need to know is what a 12-bar blues progression actually is. This short blues guitar lesson will introduce you to the 12 bar blues form, the chords you’ll need to play, and the order you’ll be playing the chords in.
First off, let’s have a look at the chords you’ll play with a 12 bar blues progression. You may, or may not be familiar with the popular I-IV-V chord progression. This dictates the chords you’ll be playing in any given key. The way it works follows.
I-IV-V Blues Chord Progression
You take any given key and count out the first, fourth and fifth degree of the major scale. Some key will include sharps and flats, but for example the key of E only includes “normal” chords without any sharps or flats. So if we want to count the I-IV-V progression in this key, we get the following:
E major – A major – B major
Since the major scale in the key of E goes: E-f-g-A-B-c-d. The first degree of the scale is E major, the fourth is A major, and the fifth is B major. If you are into music theory, you will refer to the I chord as the tonic, the IV chord as the subdominant, and the V chord as the dominant.
So now that we got the basic chord progression out of the way, lets have a look at the 12 bar blues guitar progression.
12 Bar Blues Form
From the title of this form, you can already tell that it is made up of 12 bars, or 12 measures of music. You play the same chord in each measure, as dictated by the 12 bar blues progression:
I – I – I – I – IV – IV – I – I – V – IV – I – I/V
Going back to our example in the key of E, where we already know the I – IV – V chords, you would get the following progression:
E – E – E – E – A – A – E – E – B – A – E – E(or B )
It helps to imagine the 12 bar blues in a series of 3 times 4 measures.
- The first 4 bars start things up with the relaxed I chord.
- The second 4 bars start off with 2 bars of the IV chord, which starts building tension, then resolves back to the I chord for 2 bars.
- The last 4 bars of the progression, you increase tension by playing the V chord, and gradually decrease it and eventually resolve the tension by playing the IV chord in the 10th bar, than the I chord for the last 2 bars, adding the V chord at the end as the turnaround.
An important element of the 12 bar blues is the turnaround, after which you start the entire progression all over again. The V chord is usually the turnaround chord, which again, creates a sense of tension, before turning around to the I chord, where you start the whole thing over. Here is the entire progression tabbed out, note that I uses B7 instead of B major, since it’s easier to play, and blues uses lots of 7th chords anyways:
12 bar blues guitar progression in the key of E
So basically this is the 12 bar blues guitar progression, it’s fairly simple, since it only uses 3 chords in a set progression, feel free to try it out in other key as well.
5. Minor Blues Guitar Chord Progressions:
6. Essential Blues Guitar Practice Tips :
7. Blues Guitar Lesson - Sliding 9th Technique:
8. Mastering Major and Minor Pentatonic Scales:
9. Play '40s and '50s Jump Style Guitar Blues:
10. Five (5) Essential Blues Boxes – Lesson 1:
Musician By Night: “I’ll follow-up with additional Lesson Plans for the 5 Essential Blues Boxes in future posts.”
11. Learning the Modes on Guitar:
12. MINOR BLUES SCALE:
(Playing all over the fretboard)
I hope that you find this both a helpful and interesting overview of blues guitar playing and what you need to learn to become proficient at it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section or by email, and I would be happy to help.
Until next time ~ ~ ~
Musician By Night . . .
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