Hi! I'm Nate Savage and welcome to video #4 of the Blues Guitar Quick-Start Series.
So far throughout the series, we've been really focusing on learning the 12-bar blues progression
and applying our power chords and dominant 7th chords to that progression.
It's important that you learn how to dress up your rhythm blues guitar playing and one
way to do that is through blues riffs. In this lesson we're going to learn the most
basic blues riff and in the next lesson, we're going to dress that riff up even more.
Now, for this basic blues riff we're going to be learning, there’s quite a bit stretching
involved. So don't feel bad if you can't get it right away. Just know that it may take
some work to get that stretching down. What we're basically going to be doing is outlining
the chords throughout the 12-bar blues progression with this riff and we're going to be applying
a heavy shuffle rhythm to these riff too. So keep that in mind. We're also going to
be introducing some muting to give your style a bit of a more bluesy sound.
Let's just jump right into this. So in our 12-bar blues progression, the first four measures
are over a I chord. So we need to learn this riff that goes over the I chord. And it's
pretty simple. You're going to start of with just an E power chord and you're going to play
that twice with a swung feel. That's it. The next little half of this riff, you're going
to leave your index finger where it is and then come down on the 4th fret of that A string
right there. And you're going to do the same thing; you're going to play 2 swung eighth
notes. And believe it or not, that's basically the entire riff. You're just going to repeat
it over and over again. So the whole little chunk is this. So that takes up only 2 beats,
so in order to get it a whole measure for this riff, we have to play that thing twice
and that will take up 1 measure in the 12-bar blues right? So 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
So that takes up for 1 measure. We have 4 measures of the I chord so do a little bit of math
you're going to find out you have to play 8 times to fit over 4 measures of the I chord for
the first 4 bars in the 12-bar blues riff so 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
Alright now the 12-bar blues riff switches to the IV chord in this case, that's an A
chord right? So we need to kind of adapt this riff to play over our A chord. We're going
to do the exact same thing. Just make an A power chord, index finger, first finger on
the 2nd fret of the D string and you're going to play just the 5th and 4th strings. Same
exact thing so 2 swung eighth notes there. Then you're going to come down on the 4th
fret of the D string and again play 2 more swung eighth notes. And that's your basic
riff over the A chord. And again, we have to play that twice to fill up 1 measure so
if we have 2 bars of A, we're going to have to play this 4 times.
Now, we have two more measures of the I chord. So we're going to go back to the riff over the
A chord and play that for 2 more measures for 4 times.
And here is where the stretching part comes in that I was talking about. We're going to
go to the V chord, the B chord. What we're going to have to do is make a B power chord
but because of the stretch that’s coming up, we have to make it with your first and
second fingers instead of your first and third fingers. So, first finger on the B note there
on the 2nd fret of the A string and your second finger on the 4th fret of the D string. And
that's going to be your first 2 swung eighth notes over the bar B.
From there here is the stretch; you have to stretch your pinky all the way up to the
6th fret for the next 2 swung eighth notes. So that may take a while to get that stretch
down but just work on going between those 2 eighth notes and these two. So that's your
riff over the B. You only have to do it twice because you only have one measure of the V
chord here. Now we have the measure of the IV chord. So
go back to your A riff and play 1 measure that. Then go back to the I chord for 1 measure.
And finally, we end up on the V chord for 1 measure. So get that B power chord on there.
Again with the first and second fingers. And you're going to stretch all the way up again
with your pinky and play that for 1 measure. So here is what that rhythm riff will sound
like with one of the jam tracks.
That's the most basic 12-bar blues riff that we're going to learn. One thing that you can add to this to kind of dress it up and give
it a little more style is some muting. So, if you have just riff regular swung eighth
notes, you have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and what you can do is kind of divide this up by the
beat. You have 2 notes on each beat, right? You can mute the first one or cut it short
so. What I did is just hit the strings and then come down and mute them right after I
hit them. And then the second note in the 2 eighth note is just normal. And if you do
that over and over again, muting just the numbers the 1, 2, 3, 4 you end up with this.
And my fretting hand is also helping out to, to mute the strings. So, work on that and
get that style down and then you can apply the entire thing to the 12-bar blues it might sound like this.
Hopefully, you see how learning this really simple 12-bar blues riff kind of dresses up your rhythm blues playing and gives the 12-bar
blues a little more forward momentum. Like I said this is the most basic version of this
rhythm riff that we're going to learn. But it's really important that you get it down
because this is the foundation for the rhythm riff that we're going to learn later, too.
Slow this down. Practice this as much as you need to until you start to feel comfortable
with it then you could pull up either of the jam tracks 70 beats per minute or the 100
beats per minute. And then try to play along with that too.
Thanks for watching. In the next lesson, we're going to dress this 12-bar blues riff up and
make it a little more interesting for you. If you have any questions, you can leave them
here in the comments or just e-mail me nate@guitarsystem.com. See you!