The blues, perhaps more than any other well-known musical genre, is surrounded in mystery, and has never been the subject of formal musical education in quite the way that jazz or classical music has. This is probably in large part because the best known practitioners of blues guitar have not themselves come from a background of formal musical education. The disparate origins and many variations of the blues have made it a difficult area of music to analyse and categorise definitively. Nevertheless, there a few good starting points for anybody looking to get a grip of how to play Blues Guitar.

Rhythm Progressions in Blues Guitar

The 12 bar blues is the most common blues progression, and some forms of it are so easy that they are taught to beginner guitar students on their very first lesson. A basic 12 bar blues in the key of A can be played just with open chords. The 12 bar blues patterns in E, C, D and F sharp are also useful progressions for a beginning blues guitarist to learn. The 12 bar pattern is open to a lot of different variations, some of them simple and others quite complex.

As well as the 12 bar blues, there are the less common 8 bar and 16 bar patterns. In addition, many country blues players such as John Lee Hooker would play without any set progression, sometimes sitting on one chord for an entire song. This approach to playing works best with for guitarists who play unaccompanied, or accompanied only by a drummer.

Improvisation in Blues Guitar

One of the most difficult parts of Blues Guitar Instruction is teaching how to improvise. Lead guitar parts in blues music are typically improvised - that is to say, they are made up spontaneously by the guitarist rather than being learned beforehand. Many blues guitarists will have a stock of "licks," or short melodic phrases, that they can fall back on. Some more popular blues guitarists, in particular Albert King and Muddy Waters, have become identified with some of their more idiomatic phrases, often referred to as "signature licks." Beyond just learning and playing licks by rote, a great way to learn to improvise is to play along to a progression and limit your playing to a small register of notes, perhaps all located on the one string.

Scales and Modes in Blues Guitar

Blues Guitar Instruction should best begin with the blues scale. The blues scale is very similar to the minor pentatonic - it contains all the notes of the minor pentatonic as well as the flatted fifth (sometimes referred to as the "blue note"). Beyond simply playing the blues scale, standard 12 bar blues progressions lend themselves well to Dorian and Mixolydian modes. The V chords played in the 9th and 12th bars of a standard 12 bar blues progression also invite the use of a harmonic minor scale. In other blues progressions, a great many other scales and modes can be explored.

Techniques used in Blues Guitar

Blues guitar typically makes a lot of use of legato phrasing and economy picking, particularly for electric players. Other techniques, such as alternate picking or sweeps, can be used in the blues but are far more typical of jazz and heavy metal. Blues guitar uses a lot of bends, including microtonal and quarter bends.. these microtonal intervals were unknown to most of western music prior to the twentieth century, although the influence of Blues Guitar on jazz and rock music has changed this.

Finding a teacher

If you are looking for a blues guitar teacher, try not to put too much stock into impressive technical ability. It is important that they know their way around a guitar and know how to play the blues, and you certainly don't want to be refusing to learn from anybody because they might be "too good", but an ear for the blues and an ability to explain what they're doing will help you a lot more than finding somebody who can play really really fast. A good guitar teacher should be far more interested your playing than their own - at least while the lesson is on. Blues guitar instruction will be a lot more fun if you find somebody you can really click with, although the best teachers won't leave you feeling too comfortable with your playing for too long - they will prod you to try new things and explore new ways of making music before you ever get really settled into a comfort zone.