Welcome to the first lesson of the Blues Guitar Quick-Start Series. The blues is one of the most important styles of music to learn well. This especially goes for guitar players. The blues is an important genre on it’s own, but it’s also the foundation for many other genres like country, rock, jazz, and metal. Blues was a huge influencer for guitar gods like Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
The blues is an interesting hybrid of major and minor tonalities. It’s basically its own world. One of the best things about the blues is the fact that you can learn just a couple of key things and jump right into playing along to music and expressing yourself. If you take the time to learn to play the blues really well you will build a great foundation for playing just about any style of music.
Before you get into the Blues Guitar Quick-Start Series, it would be best if you had a few things under your belt. You should have a basic knowledge of bar chords, power chords, the shuffle rhythm, note subdivisions, and hammer-ons and pull-offs. If you haven’t learned about all these techniques you’ll want to take the time to learn them.
We’ll start by covering the 12-bar blues progression. After that, we’ll take a look at dominant seventh chords, the basic and intermediate 12-bar blues riffs, the blues scale shape, and how the scale is made. Finally, we’ll end with some important tips for adding expression to your blues lead guitar playing and apply it to a jam track.
In the next lesson, we’ll get started by learning the standard 12-bar blues progression. This is essentially the foundation for all blues music. It’s a great starting point, especially when you want to start jamming with other musicians.