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The Day My Guitar Gently Weeped

If you hand me a guitar, I’ll play the blues. That’s the place I automatically go. – EC, interview 2001

Rhythm can’t be overrated!

You may wonder how it is possible that Blues musicians which never played together before can enter the stage and start playing and jamming together without any rehearsals. Is this a secret magic? No! Once you know the basic structure of a Blues song, you can play with it also, playing the rhythm guitar or adding some fine solos.

Please note: The old audio files used here as example were recorded directly from my guitar into the line-in of a sound card (see ). I played slow, so that you can follow with no problems. Nowadays they would sound better, but I think it’s better they sound like those from the beginner I was when recording, .

About Blues forms

Due to the African roots the rhythm was first. The songs used only a few, often only one “chord” all over the song. Later the influences of the western music (western doesn’t stand for country here but for the western hemisphere) introduced chord changes, but they where different to the existing musical forms. Something new was born, and after several changes and various forms (and some of them are still used) the 12 bar Blues (look at the URL) became the most popular blues form. 12 bar Blues means that the song is divided into 12 “bars” (or “measures”) with a given chord sequence. When playing, you repeat this form over and over for every verse until the song ends. There are also 8 bar (i.e. Key to the Highway from ), 16 bar and even 24 bar Blues (all forms can be divided by four!), but the most frequent form is still the 12 bar Blues. All these Blues have again different substructures (i.e. chord changes), so finally we get over hundred different ways to play a Blues (more detailsare added directly to the specific songs). Sometimes there’s no strict form at all.

For a basic 12 bar Blues, you need at least three different chords, for example in the key of E these are E(7)-A7-B7. You’ll also find the expression I, IV and V or tonic, subdominant and dominant for this chords (see for the theoretical background). In most dominant major Blues (there’s also a minor Blues), they are all played as seventh (7th) chords, sometimes except the tonic. That’s the reason why it’s written E(7). This is a bit hard for those who have a theoretical music background, because it can’t be explained that way – playing major seventh chords over minor pentatonic scales (see later) shouldn’t work, but sounds great. So don’t think too much about it – just play…

Here’s a 12 bar Blues example in the key of E:

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

(Count it: 12 bars!)

Another more detailed view showing bars and beats looks like:

1 2 3 4

How To Play An Acoustic Guitar For Beginners Pdf     How To Play Acoustic Guitar For Beginners Lesson 1
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