The Blues Basics
This video is just a brief introduction to instrumental blues for Guitar in the style of Larry Coryell (1943-2017). I am going to call this music Larry Coryell because it would seem fitting to remember this extraordinary musician with a few references to his blues playing in this and later videos. The chord progression is a twelve-bar chord sequence there is nothing at all complicated about this pattern. The musicians in the bands I played with as a teenager and later, including now all know this pattern from memory. The sequence goes. C7 F7 C7 C7, F7 F7 C7 C7 G7 F7 C7 G7 With four beats on each chord, the final chord is G7 if you are repeating the pattern but when you finish the tune the last bars just stay on C. Play that pattern again and call out the changes, but you of course should memorise the pattern, think ahead and be ready to change the chord before you get to it obviously. C7 F7 C7 C7, F7 F7 C7 C7 G7 F7 C7 G7 | C7 F7 C7 C7 F7 F7 C7 C7 G7 F7 C7 G7 |
The notes that match these chords are from the C Minor Pentatonic Scale. Again, this scale is one of the best-known scales of all time and the pattern just goes 8 11, 8 10, 8 10, 8 10, 8 10, 8 11, 8. You should memorise that pattern and be able to play it upside down and backwards, inside out, in a musical way, of course, so that is in the groove, in time, and it sounds good. Like this: Now you can add all things that guitar-players do, you know hammer-ons, pulloffs, slides, glissandi, bends, vibrato, trills, harmonics, special harmonics if you are using an electric, right-hand taps, left-hand taps, quarter-tones, backward bends, palm-mutes, stops, tremolos and the like. You could then combine them together so for example, a 12-bar blues with two bars of chords, then two bars of notes, Next time one bar of chords, then one bar of notes, so you still follow the same chord progression just leaving out the chord on every second bar. |
Guitar-players often use riffs, a riff is a repeating pattern, a little like a bass-player would play.
You could combine the riff with the chord progression and that would give you something like:
....
You could then include chords, a melody using the pentatonic scale and some riffs, still following the same twelve-bar pattern.
Well this short lesson should be useful to you just to give you a brief introduction to the blues on guitar. If you already know how to do this, well good, but if you think you need to brush up on some of these techniques you could rewind the video, pause at any point, and check out the detail.
Finally I should say that making music is best when you share with it with other people so while it is good to learn as many skills as you can, team up with some other musicians and make music together. You will find that you learn much better that way. So good luck, play every day, stay in the groove and make it sound good.
You could combine the riff with the chord progression and that would give you something like:
....
You could then include chords, a melody using the pentatonic scale and some riffs, still following the same twelve-bar pattern.
Well this short lesson should be useful to you just to give you a brief introduction to the blues on guitar. If you already know how to do this, well good, but if you think you need to brush up on some of these techniques you could rewind the video, pause at any point, and check out the detail.
Finally I should say that making music is best when you share with it with other people so while it is good to learn as many skills as you can, team up with some other musicians and make music together. You will find that you learn much better that way. So good luck, play every day, stay in the groove and make it sound good.