For just about anyone, you can learn how to play blues guitar in the same fashion as learning how to play any other type of guitar. The primary difference is in the feel while strumming, and the note choice of the scales. Once you have those 3 things down, it all boils down to of practice and patience. In most rock and popular tunes, eighth notes divide each beat into two equal pieces. This division create the familiar “one & two & three & four &” feel that we’re used to in rock tunes. On the other hand, blues guitar uses a swing feel, where each beat is broken into three pieces. Instead of “one & two &,” we get “one & a two & a three & a four & a.” Breaking each beat into three pieces creates what are called eighth note triplets. Because there are almost always four beats per measure in the blues, you are almost always playing four groups of three. When starting out with learning blues guitar, you should practice strumming an easy chord like G7, which stands for G dominant 7, with a swing feel. always practice strumming down on the strong beats, the ones labeled with a number one through four, skip the ‘&,’ and strum up again on the ‘a.’ With that rhythm you get the do DAH do DAH do DAH do DAH sound made popular by artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Albert King. One of the essential elements of learning how to play blues guitar is learning how to play a dominant seventh type of chord. All chords have 2 pieces, and blues guitar chords are no exception. If you have an A7 chord, there are two things that name tells you, you know that the chord starts on an A note, and you know it is a dominant seventh type of chord. Dominant seventh chords use the root, third, fifth, and flatted seventh of the major scale. It is the juxtaposition of the major third and minor seventh tones that give dominant seventh chords their unique flavor. In many styles of music, only the chord built from the fifth note is permitted to be a dominant seventh chord. In blues, all of the chords are dominant seventh. Finally, the blues scale is also unique. The minor blues scale is built from the root, flatted third, fourth, flatted fifth (or raised fourth), fifth, and flatted seventh degree of the major scale. The major blues scale is created from the root, second, flatted third, third, fifth, and sixth degrees of the major scale. What is interesting to note, is that the chords are all dominant seventh, which means that they have a major third, but the scale contains a flatted third. This use of the flatted third in the melody against the major third in the chord is one of the most obvious characteristics of blues music. The flatted third, along with the flatted fifth, help to give the blues, and blues based music, it’s ‘blueness.’ If you are learning how to play blues guitar, remember the words of the great BB King, “The blues is the easiest music to learn, and the hardest to master.” As in many facets of life, the blues is taking small ideas and constructing them together in such a way that they make something great.
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For just about anyone, you can learn how to play blues guitar in the same fashion as learning how to play any other type of guitar. The primary difference is in the feel while strumming, and the note choice of the scales. Once you have those 3 things down, it all boils down to of practice and patience.
Griff Hamlin is a professional guitar teacher with 25 years of experience. His new book on How To Play Blues Guitar is now available on his website, playingthroughtheblues.com.
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