Play Blues On Guitar

Many people who want to play blues on guitar are generally inspired by a major player such as B.B.King, who inspired many of today’s top guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan and hundreds of others. The blues is as old as the hills and like the hills will always be there in one form or another. Playing the blues gives a musician more freedom and mobility on a guitar than any other form of contemporary music.

Blues guitar came about from different cultures and is indeed deeply rooted in American slavery. Uneducated and lacking in any musical training , the slaves created their own music giving rise to the unique blues scales that have prevailed and, in fact, been responsible for practically all of today’s popular music. When you learn to play blues on guitar it becomes infectious and famous guitarists either stick with the genre or ensure they incorporate it into their own music.

The modern blues guitar is a combination of the Latin guitar, banjo and African instruments. All this inspired its American designers who found they had something new to work with allowing them to mix different types of strings and body styles.

Blues guitar software and courses designed with blues in mind are available online but, finding a website or selection of software that meets your own learning needs might take some time as generally the blues is taught as part of a tuition package. So when you decide that you really would like to play blues on guitar then seek out a dedicated program such as the one below which comes with our highest recommendation

Click here to learn to Play Blues Guitar

For the Rhythm Blues Guitar, the chord progression is founded on the twelve bar blues structure. More often than not, the progressive interval chords  are the I, IV and V, but other chords may also be played so long as the tonality is present in the rhythm. The Lead Blues Guitar primarily focuses on vibrato and bend allowing a great deal of expressiveness that give blues guitarists their own signature.

Techniques

In order to play blues on guitar you need to employ and master a picking technique before scales can be played. The guitar can then be played as a Rhythm Blues Guitar or a Lead Blues Guitar. Supple fingers are a must in order to get the rhythm right.

Learning to play blues on guiar, has many of the same rules that applies when learning any other genre of music, meaning that you have to play often in order to retain what you are learning, Always try to get those blues chords I, IV and V down as smoothly as you can, even if you have to move through different frets.

Try practicing and memorising a a song that you like and while you will have to first learn the chords that make up the song, try and play along with the original. This method can be used to keep yourself inspired. Nothing is more satisfying than finding out that you too can play great blues music on the guitar. All it takes is dedication, practice, and an open mind.

The story of "Lucille"

Early during B.B King's career, two men began a fight at one of his shows consequently knocking over a kerosene heater and causing the wooden venue to go up in flames. Upon evacuation B.B realised he left his faithful Gibson guitar behind and went back to get it not apprciating the danger he was in.

The two men who started the fight died in that fire and B.B discovered they were fighting over a woman named Lucille and from that point on all of B.B s guitars have been named Lucille as reminder not to do stupid things like fighting over a woman.

Lucille is a custom made Gibson ES-355 with Lucille written on the headstock and, at B.Bs request, no F -holes to reduce feedback.