Most common blues guitar chords l have the same name tag of seven. These are known as dominant seventh chords. They sound great when played together and give you a great deal of possibilities. You can also play a G7 chord by moving your finger from the third fret to the first fret on the high E string. It will expect you to change your fingering. Strumming patterns for blues are usually fast in pace. To do this, we need to keep things simple and rhythmic. Here is a great strumming pattern to learn:
Down Down Up Up Down
Change things up a bit and try alternating the up and down strums. Keep practicing them and you'll be well on your way. You'll find that I used a lot of rest in-between chords. These little pauses can be handled moving your fingers somewhat off the fretboard and discontinue strumming at the same time. You can stop strumming for that short moment and pick right back up again without breaking the pattern.
This will be challenging at first but you will soon grow into it. In musical language, it can be described as a "shuffle" feel.
Soloing Strategies
When playing blues, you may experience a problem where everything you play begins to sound similar. You may find that you continually revert back to what you know. In other words, you're playing in a box. Here are some helpful hints to help you avoid this problem.
First things first, get yourself some blues backing tracks for guitar. You can get professional tracks from companies such as 50Blues. With the backing tracks, begin by playing short bursts of music that last for roughly 10 seconds. These short "bursts" should sound like a solo. Vary the tempo and the pause time in between these short rests.
Secondly, try key changes. Move into a new key and incorporate the techniques that you are already familiar with. Use dynamics. Going from something soft to something hard really has a great effect and will train your mind to think outside of the box. I also suggest that you learn how to play 16th notes and 32nd notes in rapid succession so you will be as equally equipped to play the fast notes as you are the slow notes.
Focus in on your right hand and ensure that you give it a good blues workout exercise everyday by using alternative picking and rapid picking techniques. I urge you to focus in on that last tip. Stop looking at your left and right hand as two separate entities. Rather, look at them as one. You may notice that when you strum hard with your right hand, your left hand becomes tense even though it's just holding a simple chord.
A problem like that can lead to serious health problems in the future such as carpal tunnel syndrome. To avoid that, practice playing with your left hand at ease while your right hand strums. This will also step-up speed and assist you to contribute texture to your blues solos.
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 main thing about playing blues is in the feel, and the choice of notes and chords that are used. Once you have those 3 things down, it all becomes a matter of practice and patience.
In most rock and popular songs, eighth notes break each beat into two equal pieces. The eighth notes create the common ?one & two & three & four &? feel that we're used to in popular songs. 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 the beats into three pieces creates what are called eighth note triplets. Because there are usually four beats per measure in the blues, you are usually 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. You should practice strumming down on the strong beats, those that fall on the one, two, three, or four, skip the ?&,? and strum up again on the ?a.? This gives the familiar do DAH do DAH do DAH do DAH sound made famous by artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and BB King.
Another big part 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, you know two pieces of information from that name, 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 that blending together of the major third and minor seventh scale degrees that give dominant seventh chords their unique appeal. In most forms 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.
The last thing about blues guitar is the use of the blues scale. From a major scale, take the root, flatted third, fourth, flatted fifth, fifth, and flatted seventh degree and you have a minor blues scale. For a major blues scale, you take the root, second, flatted third, third, fifth, and sixth notes from a major scale. What really makes these scales sound ?bluesy? is the way they contain a flatted third, but are played against dominant seventh chords which have a major third. This usage is one of the more prevalent characteristics of blues music. It is also a major component of a lot of blues-based rock and popular music.
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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