The majority of blues songs (but not all) are based around a very simple rhythm structure that consists of 12 bars, hence the name. As a starting point, the simplest form of this structure will be covered in this lesson, along with basic fingerings for playing the blues.
The structure given will be presented in the key of A (I’m not sure of the correct blues term for this key, but most people will call it the blues in A).
All five examples used in this lesson have been put into one big zip, download from the following link:
To play the blues in A, we have the following twelve bar structure which just repeats over:
|
A 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
|
D 2 3 4 |
D 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
|
E 2 3 4 |
D 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
A 2 3 4 |
Simple fingerings will be used for each chord (I dont know the particular names of these chords):
When playing the A chords for instance, as indicated in the chord boxes, only two strings are strummed (A & D). The first finger always stays on the second fret of the D string and the only movement is when the third finger is put down on the fourth fret of the D string to produce the second A chord.
Its quite simple. For each bar, there is 4 beats, within one bar we wish to play 6 strums, which consists of 2 strums of the first chord of A followed by 1 strum of the second chord of A, which will be repeated twice.
Notice that there is more emphasis on the first strum and that there is a slightly longer delay between the first and second strums in comparison to all the others. When we put four bars of A together this becomes clear and you can hear that it adds more to the rhythm.
Now we need to learn the D and E parts so that we can put the full 12 bars together. Well luckily thats easy. The fingering and rhythm is exactly the same, except that we use different two strings for the other chords.
So what to do is, slowly practise each part individually and then try and assemble each of the parts together until you get it sounding like example five. Now this may take a little practise, but it’ll be worth it. Its a little tricky, but this ones like ridding a bike, you’ll not forget it once you’ve got it.
So what happens once you get to the end of the 12 bars ?, you go back to the start of course, try it and see.
Now you have the basic structure and rhythm used for many blues songs, easy wasn’t it !
We will keep this lesson short as its important that you get this down before proceeding.
Related posts:
- Place related post plugin php here...
