Blues Basics

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Instructor: Chris Feener Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: Welcome new guitarists! In this tutorial, I want to focus on getting your first blues progression under your fingers. We'll start by examining three chords (E5, A5 and B5). "5" chords are commonly referred to among guitarists as power chords. These chords are extremely predominant in rock/blues, and the best part? They're actually pretty easy! So to begin, ...

Media Length: 2:26

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Instructor: Chris Feener Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: So let's stick these chords together into an eight-bar blues progression. 1) We start by playing our E5 chord 16 times using a down picking motion. Remember here, the only two strings that should be sounded are the top two. Count "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" out loud, or tap your foot to each quarter beat (1, 2, 3, 4) 2) We transition to the A5 chord,...

Media Length: 0:32

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Instructor: Chris Feener Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: So the goal here, is to play the exact same chords, for the exact same durations of time with a slight variance. But before we do that, let's examine this variance... Below, we see the tablature of the repeating E5 chord, however, on beats two and four, the "2" (representing the second fret on the A string) becomes a "4". What this means is that while we pi...

Media Length: 1:24

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Instructor: Chris Feener Level: Beginner Topic: Chords Style: Blues

Excerpt: So now that we're rockin' the blues riffs, let's stick it back into the blues progression. The same riff variance applies to all three chords. NOTE: The B5 requires a two fret stretch while maintaining the power chord itself - for those having issues with this, feel free to play the B5 as is, through the entire measure(s) without the added higher note.

Media Length: 1:25