This is a short lesson on ideas to use in blues guitar playing, taken from a
course that I teach at the University of Melbourne called Riffs 1, and this
course is an introduction to guitar styles from around the world.
Early blues guitar focuses very much on acoustic playing and finger style work,
often with finger picks, the use of the slide, and performers like Robert Johnson
made the guitar sound like a small orchestra.
John Lee Hooker and later performers transferred some of these ideas to the electric guitar.
Firstly, I have a bass line, the four note bass line, that's going to be a recurring theme
throughout this piece.
The notes are 6th string E,
5th string A,
3rd fret on the 6th string G,
then the open E.
And this rhythm will begin on the second beat.
2, 3, 4, 1,
Now I'd like to alternate that with a melody phrase.
And this phrase combines a couple of interesting types of articulation within
the blues. Firstly the slide and I'll be sliding from the 3rd string on the
2nd fret up to the 4th.
It's good to practise that slide with the right amount of pressure.
Then we're playing the 3rd fret on the 2nd string.
Return to the 4th.
Slide back.
Pull to the side.
If I do all that very slowly:
Up to speed:
Now we can alternate that with our baseline.
Now we need something else, some more variation or some other ideas to throw into the mix.
I'm going to use this two note chord which is reminiscent of a
train whistle and very common in lots of early blues recordings.
Using the 1st fret, 1st string, 7th fret and the 8th fret on the 2nd. string
Now it's very common to bend the second note on the second string,
searching for the notes in between the notes, as is very typical in blues music.
So there I followed the high chord with two open strings.
We can also add some notes from the blues scale, and here is the E blue scale:
And we could take a melody like:
Or,
And that could become one of our phrases to be used and alternated with the bass.
Let's try and experiment with some of those ideas now.
And a final thing I'd like to throw into the mix is an exclamation on a high E
12th fret on the first string
Lots of fun playing around with licks and riffs in the key of E on the blues
scale and other blues riffs.