The blues is many things—a collection of styles, an approach to the guitar, a certain musical feeling, a common 12-bar structure, and more. The work of blues guitarists, from pioneers like Robert Johnson and Etta Baker to contemporary performers like Jontavious Willis, inspires music fans and acoustic guitarists alike. Here you’ll learn key concepts, songs, and techniques for playing the blues.
This groove-heavy gospel-blues song is a lil’ bit of heaven and a lil’ bit of hell. “Don’t Let the Devil Ride” is one of many songs that collide at the intersection of gospel and blues history. As musician/pastor Reverend Elijah Ott describes it, “To me there’s two kinds of music.…
The 1920 recording of “Crazy Blues,” on the Okeh label, by Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds, is often cited as the first blues record. While that may be debatable, it was the first blues 78 rpm to sell a million copies. It eventually sold over two million copies and…
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Take a look at some of the songs Robert Johnson played in open tunings and learn how to use his melodic and rhythmic ideas in any 12-bar blues.
Playing solos using scales is great, but that’s just the beginning. One way to flesh out the sound of scales is by adding intervals on an adjacent string to create simple harmonies.
For this lesson, I’ve written a Johnson-inspired blues in A major that teaches you the typical intro, walkdown, fills, verses, and guitar break he used in songs.
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I first heard this spiritual number on an album called Old Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, released in the late 1960s on the Folkways label. Ashley was a banjo player, singer, and entertainer who had played medicine shows, frolics, concerts, and dances throughout North Carolina. That collection of tunes featured…
At its best, slide guitar playing combines economical phrasing with special attention to pitch and tone.
Monotonic bass fingerpicking is a solo guitarist’s technique for improvising blues in a down-home, back-porch vein.
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Learn techniques that players like Mississippi John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis, and John Fahey are known for.
This is a great tune for practicing thumb rolls!
One way to add a coherent sound to your soloing is by using arpeggios. This helps in two ways: the repeating chord tones are always “correct” notes and playing the root, third, and fifth notes of a chord forces you to include interval skips in your playing instead of reeling…
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One of the great beauties of the minor pentatonic scale is the way the same phrases seem to work over all three chords of a blues progression.
The blues shuffle rhythm has a kind of swing feel that always gets the party started and can be heard throughout the blues world. Here’s a look at the basic elements of this rhythm pattern. Blues Shuffle Basics There are a lot of different ways to play this beat. Let’s…
Many classic blues turnarounds are built on a simple phrase that descends chromatically (ie, in half steps) from the minor seventh to the fifth of the I chord.
One of Blind Blake’s signature rhythmic ideas was a “thumb roll” in the bass. This quick note before the downbeat of the measure adds a unique bounce to the groove. To pull it off, let your thumb roll off the lower string, come to rest on the next one for…
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Orville Johnson teaches the techniques, progressions, and rhythmic patterns used by acoustic blues guitarists.
