Blues Music is synonymous with the guitar. Do yourself a favor and check out all the great blues guitar lessons full of tips and information we have.
Try and think of some famous blues musicians and you’ll likely come up with names like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy – not to mention the “Three Kings” (B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King.) Guess what? They all play guitar. These days, the blues form, which originated in the deep south of the United States at the end of the 19th century, is synonymous with guitar. It’s a style of music with a very rigid form (12 bar scheme, 4/4 time signature), that also relies on a an emotional state of mind. As Eric Clapton once said, “You need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don’t do it.” You either have the blues or you don’t.
This page puts the spotlight on learning blues guitar. If you’re a beginner you may want to start out with our easy songs for beginners lesson on Before You Accuse Me. That will certainly help bring you up to speed on the concept of the 12 bar blues as well as the shuffle and playing lead. We also have another series of lessons on Turning Practice Into Play that features simple blues numbers that sound great and are easy to learn. So what are you waiting for? Have you still got the blues or not?
A lot of blues music is played by adding one note to the regular pentatonic scale. This “blue note” is what makes the blues music sound the way it does.
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Knowing the basic structure of the twelve bar blues will help you immensely as both a guitarist and a musician, particularly if you want to play and jam with other musicians. Here’s a guide to explain how it works.
Here’s a very cool single-guitar finger style instrumental blues piece that will teach you about driving, single note bass lines and creating cool melody lines and fills.
Guitar Noise presents the first in a new series of songs written specifically for guitar studies. Here is a cool blues number, reminiscent of Taj Mahal’s “Fishing Blues” to help you develop your finger picking, hammer-on skills and use of syncopation and timing.
Welcome to the first of a new series of articles entitled Into the Blue, which will explore the style, sound and key players within the Blues genre. This series will be pitched at an intermediate level and will build on techniques and practices that many players will be well aware of. But, of course, we’ll still start off slowly, making sure we leave nothing to chance.
It’s always a pleasure to get a new lesson from Peter Simms! His latest piece involves putting a walking bass line underneath a standard jazz blues progression. When you put it all together, you’ll definitely think it was worth the extra practice!
Arjen has an ambitious project for the New Year – a series of pieces on improvisation. This first lesson introduces the form of the twelve bar blues, the minor pentatonic scale and the blues scale. There are exercises and even some MIDI backing tracks that you can practice along with!
Here’s a terrific introduction to the wonders of acoustic blues, using the Muddy Waters’ classic You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had. First time GN contributor Jim Arkuszewski will get you playing the blues in no time.
Alan Green’s latest piece walks you through a traditional blues turnaround, all done in a great fingerstyle. Alan has also been kind enough to furnish some MP3s to aid you with this lesson.
Jazz and blues have always been intertwined. In part two of this three-part series, Hans explores the relationships between the major and minor blues scales. Definitely a lot of fun!
Here is a great introduction to the Mixolydian scale – how to find it, how to use it. It’s great for blues, rock and a host of other things and, as always, Darrin makes learning it a joy and not a chore.
Jazz and blues have always been intertwined. Now you can see how simple blues lines can add to your jazz improvisational skills, as well as other styles. Hans is back with the first of a three-part series that will sharpen your playing considerably.
The blues offers a great opportunity to practice playing triads and further our understanding of chords. This is a hands on music theory for guitar lesson.
We’ll take this Chuck Berry classic to further our understanding of the 12 bar blues pattern. This is the second part of our three part look at the blues.
We’re going to take this three chord blues song and use it to learn the twelve bar blues. We’ll add a little theory so you can play any blues song in any key.
There are a few different claims to the origin of the slide guitar. But whatever they are, slide guitar is forever associated with the sound of blues music.
Try and think of some famous blues musicians and you’ll likely come up with names like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy – not to mention the “Three Kings” (B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King.) Guess what? They all play guitar. These days, the blues form, which originated in the deep south of the United States at the end of the 19th century, is synonymous with guitar. It’s a style of music with a very rigid form (12 bar scheme, 4/4 time signature), that also relies on a an emotional state of mind. As Eric Clapton once said, “You need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don’t do it.” You either have the blues or you don’t.
