How to play the Blues - well

MagicPigDetective

I've been playing on and off for nearly 30 odd years. When I play the blues, it's usually in a generic, plodding, style. I've never really learnt to play it properly and well and my vocab is limited. I tend to play the same licks over and over again. It's easy enough to come up with a generic 12 bar thing with some pentatonic noodling, but there are certain riffs and licks which just elevate the blues above this, which is what I want to achieve.

I've recently began learning songs from the Beano album and playing a long to Freddie King. Learning Hideaway, well the first turnaround as Clapton and Freddie play it in on the first 12 bars is the kind of awesome sounding lick I'm talking about, took some practice but now I can play it with ease. And the mixing of major and minor.  I've dabbled with a bit of fingerstyle on the acoustic, it would take a hell of a lot of practice to get the bass lines with the thumb and higher strings co-ordinated, but it I'd love to be able to play like that.

I'm going to keep going with Freddie and the Beano album, but wanted to ask for tips on how you improved and elevated your blues playing above bog standard shuffles, or suggest songs/guitarists to study, or youtube lessons?

JAYJO

The one thing i found helps me playing the blues is learning the Dominant 7 arpeggio shapes all over the neck. Take a dominant 7  Barre chord(I use the caged system) and break it down in to small playable triads and double stops. Then instead of looking for a note to land on i would look for a shape giving me chord tones and maybe the 3rd to flatten etc. I found this useful for knowing where i am also in the progression. Its something ive only recently started doing but its way better than running up and down the scales etc imo. .

Roland

Rather than learn to copy licks I’d start by going right back to basics. Blues to me is about tension and release. Release is where a phrase ends on a key note. Tension is through the sequence of notes which lead up to that release, their rhythm, and the spaces between them. So start by reviewing the release notes. 

Root and 5th of any chord are obvious. 3rd and 7th less obvious, but more sophisticated. With care you can even resolve to a bent third, somewhere between the major and minor. Listen to Deborah Coleman’s Don’t Lie To Me. At 1:37 she resolves to B, which is the 2nd of the A chord she’s playing over, and anticipates the B chord which she’s about to move to.

Tension can be built in many ways. Using quick flurries of notes is common. Repetition is common too. If you think that’s beginners stuff that watch Clapton in Party at the Palace where he plays most of a chorus on one note, building tension by repetition.

Tension building notes don’t have to be in the usual scales and fingering patterns. For example, starting at 1:35 Coleman plays c c# e b a# a e g e g, ending on that b at 1:37. If you try to analyse what she plays into scales then it dodges between A minor, A major, then chromatic then A mixolydian.

So rather than dive into a rabbit hole of copying licks and reading theory I’d advise putting yourself in the position of a plantation worker, brought up on songs which use African scales, and trying to learn how to play something on a western scale guitar. Learn the resolution notes, then finding things which sound good to your ear which lead to them. Whatever you do leave the music space to breathe.

Vibetronic

I've got a couple of really good books, I've just been teaching from one of them! Have dropped you an email  It's really good stuff, worked through and explained well. 

EricTheWeary

I started writing quite a rambling response but I won't make you suffer that.

There is a shed load of tutorial stuff out there. Duke Robillard does the T Bone Walker and three Kings stuff with a lot of understanding; Andy Aledort worked for Guitar World and does a variety of stuff but is tops for that sixties blues boom type stuff, Keith Wyatt has decades of teaching blues guitar. Obviously there are younger/ hipper players that have tutorial stuff but for going back to basics the more established tutors might be better. 

fastonebaz

Apparently Yngwie is great at playing the blues.   According to Yngwie.

Lestratcaster

I just try to play like Stevie Ray haha

roberty

Vibetronic said:

I've got a couple of really good books, I've just been teaching from one of them! Have dropped you an email  It's really good stuff, worked through and explained well. 

I'd be interested in that if it's no bother mate

Vibetronic

roberty said:

Vibetronic said:

I've got a couple of really good books, I've just been teaching from one of them! Have dropped you an email  It's really good stuff, worked through and explained well. 

I'd be interested in that if it's no bother mate

No worries, I’ll send them on either this evening/tomorrow morning 

MagicPigDetective

Thanks all for sharing your wisdom.

The book @Vibetronic sent me, Blues Guitar Soloing by Keith Wyatt, is exactly what I needed for my intermediate level. It starts with basic techniques. I mean take the finger roll, something I do but have never really heard it called that or realised or thought about it. Where I go wrong is learning songs and licks without fully understanding the techniques behind them. So really it’s just a superficial copy of it. Kind of like reading out a poem without understanding it. I’ve got to understand and work on the basic techniques that are the foundations of playing better. 

EricTheWeary

MagicPigDetective said:

Thanks all for sharing your wisdom.

The book @Vibetronic sent me, Blues Guitar Soloing by Keith Wyatt, is exactly what I needed for my intermediate level. It starts with basic techniques. I mean the finger roll, something I do but have never really heard it callee that or realised or thought about it. Where I go wrong is learning songs and licks without fully understanding the techniques behind them. So really it’s just a superficial copy of it. Kind of like reading out a poem without understanding it. I’ve got to understand and work on the basic techniques that are the foundations of playing better. 

Keith still teaches for online companies, I think he tutored at GIT and he wrote for Guitar World as well as making various videos/ DVDs. He’s very clear and very knowledgeable, should be good. 

MagicPigDetective

EricTheWeary said:

MagicPigDetective said:

Thanks all for sharing your wisdom.

The book @Vibetronic sent me, Blues Guitar Soloing by Keith Wyatt, is exactly what I needed for my intermediate level. It starts with basic techniques. I mean the finger roll, something I do but have never really heard it callee that or realised or thought about it. Where I go wrong is learning songs and licks without fully understanding the techniques behind them. So really it’s just a superficial copy of it. Kind of like reading out a poem without understanding it. I’ve got to understand and work on the basic techniques that are the foundations of playing better. 

Keith still teaches for online companies, I think he tutored at GIT and he wrote for Guitar World as well as making various videos/ DVDs. He’s very clear and very knowledgeable, should be good. 

Yeah fair play you mentioned him in your first post. This book looks good to me, and for me better that the fundamental changes books I’ve tried and not really got on with. 

BluesLover

I've tried lots of books and courses, and for me 'blues guitar unleashed' is the best. Well structured and comprehensive, with a good range of courses. You have to pay for them, i.e. not free!! Recommended.

Kilgore

MagicPigDetective said:

 I've dabbled with a bit of fingerstyle on the acoustic, it would take a hell of a lot of practice to get the bass lines with the thumb and higher strings co-ordinated, but it I'd love to be able to play like that.

@MagicPigDetective ;;

Don't be put off. I'm a mediocre guitarist at best. Over the last three years I've spent a fair amount of time on acoustic fingerstyle. There are all kinds of "exercises" to develop thumb independence but I've found just learning songs works best. 

Try something like Baby Please Don't Go or Good Morning Blues, both are easy songs and ideal for practising a monotonic bass and getting the thumb coordinated. 

I actually find alternating bass easier than monotonic, my thumb sort of does it naturally. 

Blues Guitar Institute & Daddystovepipe both have some free stuff on YouTube. 

Lewy

Two often overlooked things that I believe are important...

First is ear training. Can you sing a line and then play it on your guitar? All the great blues players were/are singing with their guitars....led by what they’re hearing in their heads, not the patterns their fingers are used to. It’s not that hard to develop with practice.

Second, don’t try to boil the ocean. Blues as a genre is a patchwork quilt of generally quite narrow individual contributions. The blues player who channels 13 different influences in a single 12 bar solo is a pretty recent phenomenon and the ones who do it well are in a tiny minority, yet they’re the ones we all try and ape. Find a few things you like and milk them for all they are worth. That’s what the architects of the genre did. When you can do those few things in your sleep, add more but don’t feel like you have to cover a huge range to be doing justice to “playing the blues”.

MagicPigDetective

More great advice, it’s much appreciated.

Been going through the Keith Wyatt acoustic blues book today, and found a YouTube lesson of him following the book exactly. Really good back to basics stuff, I needed to go back to lay some more solid foundations. And been playing along to Jimmy Reed, basic but so effective. 

Yeah I totally get needing to play more vocally rather than just familiar patterns.... his blues solo book focuses on this. Definitely been a weakness of mine.

Feeling quite enthused now  

Gulliver

Lewy said:

First is ear training. Can you sing a line and then play it on your guitar? All the great blues players were/are singing with their guitars....led by what they’re hearing in their heads, not the patterns their fingers are used to. It’s not that hard to develop with practice.

This. Even the most rudimentary ear training will help massively.

Other things I've done in the past - every time you learn a new lick - try and play it everywhere on the neck.  This will help you make all pentatonic positions usable and allow you to stitch together ideas all across the fretboard.

Also, pay particular attention to articulation, is the note picked/hammered/slid up to/bent? Playing around with those will give you more variety in sound and allow you to recycle things.

Barney

I think an important thing for blues is to have really good phrasing ...the way you pick the notes ..the. Vibrato ..the way you bend the notes ect...some really good sounding blues can be achieved by using just a few notes 

I think another important thing is to play what is in your head and not in your fingers .. so playing what you sing...learning runs and licks and stuff is ok but iff you try and fit them into anything they don't really work..it like a cut and paste .   But the same runs iff you work on them using different phrasing ..timing..ect ..really take them apart so you Know the run and don't just play it 

HAL9000

stickyfiddle

Barney said:

I think an important thing for blues is to have really good phrasing ...the way you pick the notes ..the. Vibrato ..the way you bend the notes ect...some really good sounding blues can be achieved by using just a few notes 

I think another important thing is to play what is in your head and not in your fingers .. so playing what you sing...learning runs and licks and stuff is ok but iff you try and fit them into anything they don't really work..it like a cut and paste .   But the same runs iff you work on them using different phrasing ..timing..ect ..really take them apart so you Know the run and don't just play it 

This this this!! Blues is no different to anything else in this regard, and I will never get tired of repeating this in these sorts of threads.

The reason someone like Clapton or SRV's classics are classics is partly because they're played well with a good tone and passion etc etc but ultimately it's because they're memorable tunes. You can recall/sing/hum/whistle/scat something like Texas Flood, Lenny, or Crossroads. Even the solos are super-melodic and full of hooks - not just a bunch of licks strung together. And it's why I find most modern blues guys boring, because they can play with all the fire in the world, but not playing anything new and interesting. It's also what separates Mayer from everyone else - Continuum and Try are simply jam packed with TUNES. You can play 4 notes of Slow Dancing.. or Vultures and everyone on the planet knows what song it is. That's hugely powerful.

steven70

Great thread. Not much to add that has not already been said, but some very good advice here. Cheers folks.

I have been playing The Beano album badly for 30 odd years...time to see if i can locate that Keith Wyatt book.

Justin guitars also has some good stuff on arpeggios in the blues which may be worth checking out.

Cheers