e————————————–5–8—-|

B——————————–5–8———-|

G———————–5–7–8—————-|

D—————–5–7————————-|

A——–5–6–7——————————-|

E–5–8—————————————-|

Here is a blues lick in A from David Wallimann of Jamplay:

Jamplay has more beginner guitar lessons online.

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Hawkeye Herman has been playing the blues since he was a teenager. That’s over fifty years. He learnt to play from people like Son House, Brownie McGhee, Bukka White, Sam Chatmon and Lightnin’ Hopkins.

Hawkeye has played at folk and blues festivals all over the US and Europe, gathering a crowd of devoted fans along the way.

In this video Hawkeye talks about moving chords and scales up the guitar neck and expressing yourself through blues music.

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No matter where it came from, twelve bar blues is like a universal language among guitar players, so it’s best to learn a little of it.

Here is a representation of twelve bars in the key of A:

A A A A
D D D D
E D A E

. . . or you could play seventh chords instead:

A7 A7 A7 A7
D7 D7 D7 D7
E7 D7 A7 E7

. . . or you could play the basic chords up to the last bar and let the E7 chord lead into the next twelve bars.

You can make up your own variations on the basic twelve bar blues – play arpeggios, use barre chords instead of open chords, but along with practicing blues on your guitar you will get plenty of ideas on making the blues your own music by listening to other blues guitar players and imitating what you like.

Here is a video that will help you with the major pentatonic scale in blues guitar music:

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You might need to use all four left hand fingers to fret seventh chords. The G7 chord is easy but the C7 chord and the B7 involve applying pressure on four guitar strings. This use of the pinky in fingering these chords will require a bit of practice.

One simple trick for the blues beginner guitar player is getting the hang of when to lift your fingers off the fretboard. Changing from the A minor chord to the C major chord involves moving only the third finger of the left hand from the second fret on the third string to the third fret of the fifth string, yet beginner guitar players will often make this chord change by lifting all the fingers off the old chord position and replacing them in the next chord shape.

A basic chord progression in the key of E can easily be learnt by blues beginner guitar players. It contains the chords E, E7, A7 and B7:

E E E E | E E E E | E E E E | E7 E7 E7 E7 |

A7 A7 A7 A7 | A7 A7 A7 A7 | E E E E | E E E E |

B7 B7 B7 B7 | A7 A7 A7 A7 | E E E E | E E E E |

Here is the tab for the E chord:

e———————–|

B———————–|

G——–1————–|

D——2—————-|

A—-2——————|

E–0——————–|

The E7 chord is the same but has a D note added at the third fret of the second string:

e———————–|

B———-3————|

G——–1————–|

D——2—————-|

A—-2——————|

E–0——————–|

The B7 chord is a little awkward because all four fingers are crowded together:

e———-2————|

B——–0————–|

G——2—————-|

D—-1——————|

A–2——————–|

E-x———————|

And here is the A7 chord:

e————0———-|

B———-2————|

G——–0————–|

D——2—————-|

A—-0——————|

E–x——————–|

Here is a video on playing 7th chords:

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The twelve bar blues chord progression is very widely used in pop and rock music. If you have listened to and tried to play some blues songs, you will understand how popular this basic chord sequence is. In playing blues guitar you take the main chord of the song you are playing, which is called the “tonic”, the fifth step of the scale – the “dominant”, and the chord below the dominant, the “subdominant”, or fourth step. So if you are playing a song in the key of E your tonic chord is E, the subdominant is A and the dominant is B. If you are playing in the key of A, your chords are A, D and E.

In musical notation your chord sequence is commonly written in Roman numerals. In the case of the twelve bar blues chord progression, it will be written as I IV V. Using this notation you can tell which chords you will be using in any key.

So let’s look at how the twelve bar blues chord progression actually progresses. Well, the first four bars use the tonic chord, in the fifth and sixth you play the subdominant, in the seventh and eight you will play the tonic again, in bar nine it’s the dominant, in bar ten it’s the subdominant and in the eleventh and twelfth bars it’s the tonic, or in this bar the dominant seventh chord is usually used to prepare for the tonic chord to begin the progression again.

The fact is that the seventh chord is used a lot in blues music rather than just the straight major chord. This will make the chord sequence in the key of E look like this:

E7 E7 E7 E7

A7 A7 E7 E7

B7 A7 E7 E7

Or you could just play the seventh chords in the fourth and twelfth bars like this:

E E E E7

A A E E

B A E E7

Or you could play all major chords except for the subdominant and the final bar:

E E E E

A7 A7 E E

B A7 E E7

So there you have a couple of variations in the twelve bar blues chord progression already. Once you have the feel of the progression using open chords, you can try experimenting with the barre chord and power chord versions of the basic chords.

Here is Justin with a lesson on moving your blues progression around to play in any key:

And here is a lesson on playing blues guitar in E from Chord Charts For Guitar.

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Blues guitar lessons online will not only teach you how to play the blues but also how to read guitar tabs and chord charts, how to adjust your tone control and pickups to get you sounding like a real blues guitar player, and basic stuff like how to keep your guitar in tune.

If you enjoy listening to blues music, but do not know much about the guitar, a typical course of online guitar lessons would make sure you knew the basics of handling and maintaining your instrument before teaching you songs in your favorite genre. Before you start learning to play blues songs and guitar solos, you would be taught some strumming patterns, how to hold the pick, and perhaps a finger picking pattern or two.

Unlike the early blues songs which would have utilized open chords, modern blues numbers make use of barre chords, power chords and exotic scales and modes. Also the sophisticated playing techniques developed over the past fifty years, like string bending, trills and slides have a big role in blues music.

Here’s a guy called Hawkeye Herman who could not be anything else but a blues guitar player. He’s one of the blues teachers at Jamplay.

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To start with your A minor scale, just go up and down in the three positions at first, without trying to connect them. This is boring stuff and you probably want to know how long you need to keep it up. The answer is a day or two AFTER you get bored with it. Once you can go up and down the scale in your three positions more or less in your sleep, it’s time to start working with note values. Using your metronome on a low setting, start playing your scale using triplets and quadruplets. If you don’t have any ideas on how to start, listen to some CD’s or go into your bookmarked free guitar lessons sites.

Once you have some note patterns to work with you can mix them up and start mixing up the positions you are playing at. You can move between places on the fretboard using slides, bends and hammer-ons.

This YouTube video shows you some A minor pentatonic licks:

With none of the modern technological stuff available to him in the nineteen sixties, Eric just set his guitar and his amp according to his taste and played.

Some of what you hear on record is more to do with what happens as the music is recorded than with the sound Clapton set out to make. Eric Clapton always played with the volume at full tilt and the tone was at a very low setting. The use of the wah-wah pedal and heavy gauge strings also contributed alot to the sound.

Eric Clapton emerged with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in the sixties playing a 1960 Les Paul Standard guitar. His amp was 1962 Marshall forty-five watt 2×12 combination. He fought with producers and engineers to be allowed to play at concert volume in the studio. This was unheard of at that time.

When he played with Cream, Clapton played a 1964 Gibson Les Paul SG. He chose 100 watt Marshall heads and 4×12 cabinets. He was also one of the pioneers of the wah-wah pedal. It was with this guitar and amp that he produced his famous “woman” tone. Do not forget Eric’s Marshall amps were extremely overdriven and this was another major contributor to his sound.

You can buy pedals that are supposed to duplicate Eric Clapton’s guitar settings but you can be more “authentic” by setting the guitar and amp yourself. Because Eric has mostly been seen playing Fender Stratocasters for some years, we will stick with setting a Strat to try to get that “woman tone”. But remember that Eric was not playing a Strat when he was with Cream so you will need to be creative to get the sound out of your guitar.

You will be using the neck pickup. You need to turn down the second and third volume control knobs to get a fairly muddy tone. From here you need to use your ear to compare your sound with one of Eric Clapton’s records. As far as your amplifier goes, set your bass to around seven and the middle at five. The treble should be set at five. These suggestions are only meant to be a rough guide to start off in the right direction to achieving a tone that you may not have the equipment to duplicate one hundred per cent.

To cap it off, here is the classic 1968 interview with Eric Clapton where he explains how he gets the “woman tone” and how he builds his material riffs he has learnt:

Cream – Eric Clapton Guitar Interview (1968)

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The minor pentatonic scale and the changing relationships between those five notes will enable you to give your guitar playing the distinctive blues flavor. Get to know this scale by experimenting with simple tunes. You can make them up for yourself and play them up and down the guitar neck.

As you spend some time playing your own tunes you can listen to CDs of the great blues guitarists. Get familiar with how you are using the five notes of the minor pentatonic scale and see how the guitarists of the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties used them. See how those old bues guitar players played inside the scale and how they ventured outside it to add some spice to the blues. Listen to how they used slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs as well as up and down picking.

If you like the licks you are hearing in the work of the great blues guitarists, teach them to yourself. You need to be careful here. Your aim is not to duplicate note-for-note the licks of the greats, but you need to tap into the mood of their playing and see how it connects with your mood. Don’t be afraid to leave some empty spaces. You don’t have to fill your blues solos with notes.

Next, you can start getting into mixing the major pentatonic scale with the minor pentatonic. You will find that blues guitar players of the past did that to great effect. So, still playing in the key of E, but now mixing the minor and major pentatonic, you get the notes E F# G G# A B C# D. An important element of blues music is the flattened fifth note. It can be overused, so just look at it as another tool to help you learn to speak blues. So with the flattened fifth added, your notes are E F# G G# A Bb B C# D.

Now you have a bunch of notes that, played one after the other, will sound pretty ordinary. Go back and start experimenting with those notes. Make up some more tunes. Listen again to the big-time blues guitar players. Learn which notes are your bread and butter and which of these notes are to be used a little more sparingly.

If you want a little help to start you off, try using licks in the major pentatonic scale over the I and V chords. You might notice your minor notes go well with your IV chord.

Here is a very simple blues guitar solo shown on video:

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So put aside your ideas that guitar players start off with their own material, and start learning the solos of whatever guitar players you admire from their records. Learn simple licks at first. The first thing you might discover that surprises you is that the solos of the great blues guitarists is not rocket science. Great music does not have to be hard to play.

So you don’t need an amazing guitar technique to start learning blues but you do need to work on how you play. For this you need to record yourself playing. Do it often and listen to it closely. The way you sit or stand as you play, the way you hold the pick, the amount of force you put into your strokes and whether you use up or down strokes. All of these things are important to whether your playing sounds right.

This series of videos will help you get started on playing blues guitar:

If you think you need improvement, get some advice. Ask other guitar players what they think. Do some busking, get some reactions from your audience. Record a video of your playing, post it on YouTube and get some comments. Go on guitar forums, post the link to your video and ask for feedback.

But before you do any of that, you need to have some basic guitar chops. I said before you don’t need an advanced technique, but you need to be good enough to play with a little authority. You need to pass your enthusiasm for the music onto your listeners. If you are hesitant and worrying about making a mistake, you need some more hours of practice till you get past that stage.

One thing blues guitar solos are not is the guitar player’s effects and equipment. If you want to use a certain sound for your playing, that’s fine but when you are learning solos, concentrate on learning the music, do not worry about the sound at this stage of your learning. After all, when Eric Clapton stopped playing through Marshall amps or using the wah-wah pedal, it didn’t mean he had stopped playing the blues. So a certain guitar sound does not make the blues.

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