| If you're a guitar player who wants to learn the blues, | | | | musical ingredients necessary to create jazz music |
| you'll need to really study the blues guitar. You'll need | | | | (the other being Classical). |
| thousands of hours of practice in order to sound fluid | | | | This may not sound important to you as a blues guitar |
| and masterful. | | | | lesson, but when you know musical history you can |
| For one of your blues guitar lessons, in order to give | | | | study more specific things and learn ideas and |
| yourself a deeper understanding of this music that you | | | | concepts to add to your blues playing that many other |
| want to play, study some of the roots of the music. | | | | people would never think of. This allows you to |
| The blues is often associated with originating with | | | | enhance your creativity and become more advanced |
| black American people, and largely it did. However, the | | | | as a blues guitarist. You now know of several other |
| African slaves had brought with them a West African | | | | musical traditions that you can throw into any blues |
| guitar-and-vocal musical tradition that relied on a | | | | guitar lesson, instead of just imitating what you hear |
| "pentatonic" scale and call-and-receive guitar and vocal | | | | today! |
| interaction just as the blues does--but, they did not | | | | But let's move on. You'll also need many a blues guitar |
| have the blues. They had this tradition, and they then | | | | lesson that centres on the Twelve Bar Blues form. |
| developed their slave songs to send coded messages | | | | This is the basic form of all blues music. This means |
| to each other as well as to keep themselves | | | | that you use the I, IV, and V chords of whatever key |
| energized as they did their back-breaking labour in the | | | | you are playing in to create a repetitious pattern--the |
| heat of the sun. | | | | basic melodic progression of the blues song. You want |
| These two styles became merged, but then the black | | | | many a blues guitar lesson this very basic form |
| Africans heard other music that would come to have | | | | because as you advance you'll want to get more |
| a powerful influence on them: the white people's | | | | creative and have more variations on the blues theme |
| Christian hymns, and then later on the imported Celtic | | | | so that you don't always sound the same with |
| music of the Scots and Irish immigrants, which itself | | | | everything you play or write. |
| would evolve in American into bluegrass music and | | | | Once you have down these basic I, IV, and V |
| Appalachian mount music. It was all four of these | | | | chords--which, for instance, in the key of C would be |
| strong musical traditions which the black Africans | | | | the C, F, and G chords--you can then have yourself |
| merged into what became The Blues: a music that | | | | many another blues guitar lesson which you explore |
| was meant to invoke sadness and hard luck situations, | | | | what are called chord substitutions and arpeggios, or |
| but also a very earthy spirituality and sexuality, all with | | | | "broken chords". And then at last, you will want to |
| powerful, driving rhythms, strong but rough vocals, and | | | | begin learning how to solo. And for blues guitar soloing, |
| guitar playing that sometimes acted as part of the | | | | you'll need to learn how to play "minor over major" |
| rhythm section while at other times mimicked and | | | | scales. You will need great blues music knowledge to |
| elaborated upon the human voice in the song. | | | | draw on so that you can improvise, because |
| The blues also always had white practitioners, but as | | | | improvisation (especially when soloing) is at the heart |
| they did not write from out of the experience of being | | | | of playing the blues. You will also want to master |
| enslaved, their sound, while very soulful, would often | | | | "slurs" upon the guitar--how to bend strings to get |
| veer into a little more of what today we may call | | | | notes, how to use glissandos, and so forth. |
| Country Blues or Texas Boogie. They would tell many | | | | What you should see here with all of this is the |
| a sad story, but the emphasis was more on crafting | | | | importance of getting the right kind of training and |
| some kind of story than invoking the mournful | | | | teaching. You will need every blues guitar lesson you |
| emotions and state of mind of being utterly | | | | practice to be high quality, or else you will just be |
| disenfranchised. The blues would go on to become the | | | | spinning your wheels and not progressing. So, make |
| very foundation stone and spinal column for the type | | | | sure that that's what you get! |
| of music called rock-n-roll as well as one of the two | | | | |