Blues Guitar Lessons

Studying Blues Guitar is one of the best ways to learn to play expressively. The guitar is a fantastic instrument for playing soulful lines with heavy vibrato which are perfect for this style. One of the best lessons is to look at B.B. King; he can play just one note in some cases, and put so much feeling on it that it's worth a thousand notes. Stevie Ray Vaughn is probably the best technical player in this genre.

The secret key to the blues that alot of people don't realize is that you are playing in a free space between major and minor key centers. To really get the essence of this, try having a friend play a nice straight major bar chord on their instrument along with a beat (or just record yourself if you are alone). Now you normally expect to play along in a major tonality right? Let's say the other person is playing a C Major chord. What I want you to do is hit a really big strong C Minor chord right on top of that major chord.

The notes Eb and E in the two chords are conflicting with eachother so it may sound unatural at first. Keep playing that minor chord on top of the major and your ear will adjust especially after you do this...

- Stay tune for the rest this part!!!

Below is a graphic of the primary "box" pattern for the blues. You can do a million riffs within this simple pattern. You basically start from the root note on the sixth string and the pattern from low to high in frets is 4-3-3-3-4-4

This example is in the key of F#. You will notice that this is actually a natural minor scale which you can play over a major or minor chord.