Why I love to Play & Learn Blues Guitar
Blues guitar is a great fun genre of guitar to play. Whatever your main preferred style of guitar playing is, it’s really good to be able to just kick back and rip out a screaming blues guitar solo over a twelve bar blues, or kick around some soulful fingerstyle blues playing. I’d like to share with you a few reasons why I love to learn blues guitar, so whether the blues is your passion or just something you’d like to try as a change from your normal style, read on...
Firstly and most importantly, the blues just sounds great! The simpler harmonic structures and restrictions of the blues scale means that it’s actually quite easy to avoid playing notes that sound “bad” and you can easily get into a groove over a simple 12-bar blues pattern that enables you to really focus on the feel without worrying about complicated chord structures. Also, the blues has become so ingrained into our culture that any blues music instantly has a familiar feel to it which enables musicians and audiences to get into the music very quickly.
The blues is pretty easy to learn, but has a lot of depth to study so you never need to feel like you’re stuck in a rut. You can start very simply with the 12-bar blues chord pattern, which is one of the easiest chord patterns around. Once you’re familiar with that you can build on it with common variations such as using 7th chords and other chord substitutions, and then move onto other patterns such as 8-bar blues patterns.
For lead guitar playing, the blues scale is a very straightforward scale to learn that is instantly applicable to a huge variety of situations and nearly always sounds great! Whilst great blues music doesn’t always stick to this scale exclusively, you need little more than this scale to be tearing out great blues solos for hours on end that you’ll love to play and audiences will love to listen to.
Because of the relative simplicity of blues music, it’s something most musicians know at least a little bit of, so it provides a great common language for musicians to play together at jam sessions, so if you want to play with other musicians it’s a great thing to learn.
Finally, the blues is the foundation for most rock and jazz music, so anything I learn while studying blues guitar will also have its applications when playing in those and other genres.
Overall, blues guitar is easy to get started with, great fun to play and really enjoyable for your audiences to listen to, so whatever your preferred style of guitar playing is I’d recommend that you take some time to study the blues.
If you want some more information on the blues, check out this website: Learn Blues Guitar
Firstly and most importantly, the blues just sounds great! The simpler harmonic structures and restrictions of the blues scale means that it’s actually quite easy to avoid playing notes that sound “bad” and you can easily get into a groove over a simple 12-bar blues pattern that enables you to really focus on the feel without worrying about complicated chord structures. Also, the blues has become so ingrained into our culture that any blues music instantly has a familiar feel to it which enables musicians and audiences to get into the music very quickly.
The blues is pretty easy to learn, but has a lot of depth to study so you never need to feel like you’re stuck in a rut. You can start very simply with the 12-bar blues chord pattern, which is one of the easiest chord patterns around. Once you’re familiar with that you can build on it with common variations such as using 7th chords and other chord substitutions, and then move onto other patterns such as 8-bar blues patterns.
For lead guitar playing, the blues scale is a very straightforward scale to learn that is instantly applicable to a huge variety of situations and nearly always sounds great! Whilst great blues music doesn’t always stick to this scale exclusively, you need little more than this scale to be tearing out great blues solos for hours on end that you’ll love to play and audiences will love to listen to.
Because of the relative simplicity of blues music, it’s something most musicians know at least a little bit of, so it provides a great common language for musicians to play together at jam sessions, so if you want to play with other musicians it’s a great thing to learn.
Finally, the blues is the foundation for most rock and jazz music, so anything I learn while studying blues guitar will also have its applications when playing in those and other genres.
Overall, blues guitar is easy to get started with, great fun to play and really enjoyable for your audiences to listen to, so whatever your preferred style of guitar playing is I’d recommend that you take some time to study the blues.
If you want some more information on the blues, check out this website: Learn Blues Guitar
