Minor Blues

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: Hi everyone! Welcome to this tutorial on the minor blues. The minor blues is much like our beloved standard blues in many ways. It contains 3 primary chords, is generally 12 bars long and doesn't follow our standard ideas of music theory - in other words it's more of a feeling or sound than a theoretical musical idea. Unlike our standard or major blues whi...

Media Length: 1:55

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: Okay, here we go! In this first progression we'll only be using our three minor chords in their most basic open string form. All the chord shapes we'll use throughout each progression are given below each example in TAB, standard notation and chord boxes for your convenience. This is a minor blues in its most basic form and has a rather 'folky' quality rat...

Media Length: 2:08

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: The transition from progression 1 to progression 2 is a simple one. It's more usual to play minor 7th chords instead of straight minor chords when playing a blues in this way. This is much the same as with a major blues where we'll play dominant 7th chords in place of normal major chords. It gives us a more 'bluesy' quality. Here, again, we're using basic o...

Media Length: 2:38

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: Let's make our chords more sophisticated for this 3rd progression. Open string chords aren't going to cut it any more. In this version we still use minor 7th chords but we're going to move up the neck a little and use shapes more usually associated with a jazzier feel. The first thing to note about our new shapes is that we have a gap of one string between ...

Media Length: 3:01

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: In progression 3 we had very full sounding chords where we were playing the root note as the lowest note or bass note in each shape. This is fine for solo or duo performances but is a bit of a problem when playing with a bass player. If we have the root note low down in the chord it tends to conflict with the bass whose playing that root anyway in a more eff...

Media Length: 4:16

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: Right - we're at the final stage now. Our final alteration will occur in bars 9 and 10 of our progression. We're going to use a classic blues trick using two chords as substitutions for the Dm9 and Em7 already in those bars. In bar 9 we're going to insert an F9 chord. This is the classic James Brown-esque funk chord - a sound I'm sure you'll recognize. Thi...

Media Length: 3:05

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Instructor: Tom Quayle Level: Intermediate Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: Here's the backing track for progression number 5!

Media Length: 6:35