Blues

hey everyone, I want to start working on blues. Any place I should start? chords, scales, songs, etc?

go out to a abandoned rail road station, or train tracks, or abandoned rail car right after you lost the girl of your dreams, bring an acoustic guitar a pick and a slide... something will happen good eventually :) cept maybe getting hit by the train... yeah watch out for that...

Nah im just kidding :) i mean for all music you need to know theory... so what theory you know, blues qare mainly based around pentatonics but not comfined to them. Id say itd be important to learn the blues scale and jam to some 12 bar blues...

Son House, Robert Johnson. Guys like that. There are a lot of modern guys who are good with bluesy playing. Some of Jack White's stuff is pretty bluesy. Slash's live solo's are VERY blues influenced. Led Zeppelin basically got famous for ripping off blues artists. Blind Willie Dixon being one of them. That's where "Whole Lotta Love" came from. Anyway though, Zep are very good for bluesy-rock. Some other blues artists are John Lee Hooker and BB King (obviously).

There's a thread BBT made a while back with a bunch of great blues tunes. Here it is -

http://www.all-guitar-chords.com/topic.php?id=4126

Ozz

however it depends what type of blues your going at some many people can qualify as blues guitarists... and just about everyone uses blues scales chord progressions...

you can have people like randy rhoads, slash, jimmy page being called blues players, even tony iommi, and then have people like david gilmour, allen collins, jimi hendrix, allman brothers, jerry garcia even being called blues players... but the true ones are people like robert johnson...

id start with the blues scales, and 12 bar blues, for 12 bar blues check out t for texas by skynyrd for a faster 12 bar blues, or seamus by pink floyd for a slower acoustic 12 bar blues...

by the way for jamming and improving improvizations 12 bar blues is fantastic, gives you so many options, you can stay with the base scale or follow the chords or do something tradition. its really nuts. i love it :)

Once you get some licks down try this site
http://www.guitarbackingtrack.com/bts/Jamtracks.htm
There are plenty of blues tracks to practice with.

Go to the crossroads at midnight and wait. Bring your guitar.

lol. Nice.

EMB - thank you, I was thinking that. 12 bar dose sound like the right way to go after I learn a few more chords and some scales to go over them.

Ozzfan - Robert Johnson is my hero! He really changed what I thought is blues and whats not, in my book anyway. As for other blues player I've been all over the place. Johnson's song are the ones I want to learn, but that is going to take some time. I read his tabs and try to understand this with my own guitar, but really hard to understand sometimes. I have seen what you would say is standard blues licks and scales look like, but his are something else. I may think this because I'm still new to music theory. But blues (or any music for that matter) is more in the way you play, the way you bring the notes togather.


Zilla - thank you, I found this long ago and lost it in my sea of bookmarks. it feels good to see it once again.


Guitar Joe - I think that only works in the midwest or the south, I'm in the north west... :P

Learn the blues scale. There's 3 versions in the upper left of this page called guitar scales.

Dave Hole is one my faves. He plays a standard guitar but uses a slide. Not so much for learning but for listen and learn.

Good blues players will play intervals off the beat. Most solo intervals match the chords on the beat but with blues it's off by a hair.

i just bought a book... hal leonard 101 blues licks or something of the sort. $15. so far i've enjoyed it. some of them are a bit out of my league for the time being, but since buying the book i have 6-7 licks memorized that i can play in any key

i bought one of those books too, its called "100 Killer licks and chops for Blues guitar" by Phil Capone. it came with a cd that has all the licks recorded so you can hear how it sounds. I havnt had the time to go through all of it yet, but i highly recommend it

Aside from the obvious, which is learning the theory, such as the pentatonic scales and 12-bar blues progressions, the best thing to do is find some really good blues guitarists to listen to, for influence and ideas. As the saying goes "Good composers borrow, great composers steal".

Be sure to listen to Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Albert King, Freddie King, Bobby 'Blue' Bland and Muddy Waters. They're the essentials. They laid the groundwork. Also, try listening to some country guitar players, they bring the blues into their playing to a large degree.
A few more guitarists to listen to would be more what you'd call blues-rock players; Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Paul Kossoff, Peter Green, John Mayall, Jeff Beck, Mick Taylor and Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Joe Perry, Jimi Hendrix, Tony Iommi, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Gary Moore, Slash, Jerry Cantrell, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Joe Bonamassa, Paul Mahon (Of 'The Answer'), Lenny Kravitz, Randy Rhoads, Steve Vai, Ted Nugent, Pete Townshend.
Hope that helps.

open tunings and a capo....and you need to watch this epicness