Sentinel, OK Guitar Lessons For Beginners

| V7 / / / | IV7 / / / | I7 / / / | / V7 / / |

and using graphics:

A common variation of this is called quick change, inserting the IV chord in the 2nd measure, and looks for the E scale like:

E7 – A7 – E7 – E7 A7 – A7 – E7 – E7 B7 – A7 – E7 – B7

If you play a minor Blues it’s almost the same except the I and IV chords are play as minor chords and therefore are noted i and iv (see )

In - Am - in - in Am - Am - in - in B7 - Am - In - B7

Chords are:

4/4, 12/8 – what does this mean? You may have already read about a 4/4 or 12/8 beat somewhere. What do the numbers stand for? That’s quite simple: the upper number tells you how many beats you have in a bar the lower number tells you the note value (duration) of a note Most Blues are played in 4/4 time (or beat), that means you have four (4) quarter notes (1/4 notes) per bar. Slow Blues is often played in 12/8 time, that means twelve (12) quavers (or “eighth notes”, 1/8) per bar.

Lyrics

In the early stage of Blues music there were no guitar solos or even instrumentals, it was a vocal music. The guitar was used to to accompany the singer, who usually told a story about the bad life of the African-American people, often about himself.

Looking at the lyrics of some Blues standards you see the typical call-and-response (not: question and response!) structure, divided in three sections of four bars each (the precursor of the Blues was even more simple, just a line repeated three times):

– 1st statement (4 bars) – repeat statement (4 bars) – conclusion (4 bars)

or simply A-A-B.

Most Blues lyrics are in an autobiographical style, about the bad life of the African-American population in America at the beginning 20th century. They are stories about trouble with women or work like no money, no drinks, no job, often containing more or less hidden metaphors and ambiguities, some of them are aggressive against women or contain hidden sexual innuendos. But before judging over it, consider the living conditions of the African-American people at that time. Life wasn’t easy those days. Equality of rights simply didn’t exist. The census from 1920 resulted in a total U.S. population of 105,710,620, and a Black population of 10,463,131 (9.9%) []. But in the Delta over 90% of all people were Black. Although slavery had been abolished according to the 13th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, most African-American people still struggled in grinding poverty as agricultural, domestic and menial laborers. Many were sharecroppers like before. Founded in 1867 theKu Klux Klan became a power in the South and beyond, employed lynching, cross burnings and other forms of terrorism, violence and intimidation. The Jim Crow era saw the cruelest wave of “racial” hatred. Between 1890 and 1940, millions of African Americans were disenfranchised, killed, brutalized, even discouraged from learning. They really did suffer, nowadays it’s beyond belief how these things could happen. But the Blues tells the story about.

You can even go deeper into the lyrics and do some linguistic research. The meter often used within blues lyrics is iambic trochaic, which is is marked by an unstressed point followed by a stressed point proceeded by two unstressed points and ensuing that would be another stressed point. And there’s even more to discover. Even Blues purist John Mayall made some mistakes when composing Blues, “Saw Mill Gulch Road” has some strange metrics (acc. to A. M. Dauer).

Some Blues lyric examples:

Pay day is comin’, and I got those pay day Blues; (I said) Pay day is comin’, and I got those pay day Blues; I’ve got so many women, that I don’t know what to do.

or They call it stormy Monday, yes but Tuesday’s just as bad; They call it stormy Monday, yes but Tuesday’s just as bad; Wednesday’s even worse; Thursday’s awful sad.

or I got rambling, I got rambling all on my mind; I got rambling, I got rambling all on my mind; I hates to leave my baby, but she treats me so unkind.

As always, there are variations possible. Take the “Canned Heat Blues”:

I woked up, up this morning, with canned heat on my mind; Woked up this morning, canned heat was on my mind; Woke up this morning, with canned heat, Lord, on my mind

uses the A-A-A structure to emphasize the call statement things, while later:

I woke up, up this morning, crying, canned heat ’round my bed; Run here, somebody, take these canned heat blues; Run here, somebody, and take these canned heat blues

uses A-B-B to make the response more important. You see that the Blues can be everything from simple to complex. There are rules, but one of them is you’re allowed to brake the rules.

Intros

To call attention to the audience that you start to play, a Blues song typically starts with an intro like (in E)

I----4-----3-----2-------0-------2---I

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Lyrics

Intros

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