Blues Guitar Book Pdf

[Ailene Goldhirsh]

Bluesis the musical precursor to so many different genres of music, and it continues to be the starting point for many beginner guitarists (for good reason). As Keith Richards said, if you want to play rock guitar, you had better learn how to play blues guitar first.

I have no idea who the first guitar virtuoso was. If you do, please let me know. But let me submit Blind Blake as a candidate. This guy was an acoustic finger picking wizard. Incredibly technically proficient, yet soulful. A rare combination.

In this course you will:Learn to play several styles of rhythm guitar, and solo over 8 and 12-bar progressions in E, G, and other keys, with varying tempos and grooves, including shuffles, straight eighth, and slow blues.Play pentatonic and blues scales in 5 positions up the neck, and use those fingerings while soloing.Play turnarounds, and use solo pacing and call and response techniques.Play examples and progressions from several styles of blues, including Chicago blues, gospel blues, jazz blues, and minor blues.Learn the techniques and licks of classic stylists, such as T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins, B.B. King, Earl Hooker, and Magic Sam, whether you're trying to bring a blues sound to your playing, or interested in adding more depth to your own style.Learn basic finger style and slide techniques. Read Less OverviewSyllabusRequirementsInstructorsEnroll NowNo application requiredRequest InfoNeed guidance?

Prerequisite Courses, Knowledge, and/or Skills

Completion of Guitar Chords 101 and Guitar Scales 101 or equivalent knowledge and experience is required. Students should have at least one year of playing experience and the ability to play some chords on the guitar. Guitar tablature and chord blocks, in addition to traditional notation, will be used throughout the course.

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Michael Williams has been active as a blues and jazz guitarist since 1987, performing extensively throughout the United States and Canada as a member of Grammy award winning James Cotton's blues band, and with many other artists, including David "Fathead" Newman, Mighty Sam McClain, the Bruce Katz Band, Sugar Ray Norcia, Darrell Nulisch, Toni Lynn Washington, Michelle Willson, Jerry Portnoy, the Love Dogs, blues piano virtuoso David Maxwell, and his own band, Michael Williams and Friends. Michael performed on James Cotton's album, 35th Anniversary Jam, which won a W.C. Handy Award and received a Grammy nomination for the Best Traditional Blues Album in 2003. He performed on Bruce Katz's 2004 release, entitled A Deeper Blue, and his playing, songwriting, and arranging are featured on Michelle Willson's album So Emotional, which earned a four-star review in DownBeat magazine. In 1999 he released an album, entitled Late Night Walk (Blue Tempo Records), which features ten original compositions with guest artists David "Fathead" Newman on tenor sax, Sugar Ray Norcia on vocals, and Bruce Katz on Hammond B3 organ and piano.

Michael is an associate professor in the Guitar department at Berklee College of Music and specializes in teaching a mix of blues and jazz styles. Originally from Northern California, he has written jingles for radio and television, and performed on extended tours throughout Europe with jazz and theater groups. Read Less What's Next?When taken for credit, Blues Guitar can be applied towards the completion of these related programs:

Blues is a music genre[3] and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s.[2] Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

"The Blues" is characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans.[4]

Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery, with the development of juke joints occurring later. It is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music.

The term 'Blues' may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798).[5] The phrase 'blue devils' may also have been derived from a British usage of the 1600s referring to the "intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal".[6] As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils and came to mean a state of agitation or depression. By the 1800s in the United States, the term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase 'blue law', which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday.[6]

In Henry David Thoreau's book Walden, he mentions "the blues" in the chapter reflecting on his time in solitude. He wrote his account of his personal quest in 1845. Though, it wasn't published until 1854. [8]

The phrase "the blues" was written by Charlotte Forten, then aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862. She was a free-born black woman from Pennsylvania who was working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, and wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and later noted a number of songs, such as "Poor Rosy", that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that the songs "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit", conditions that have inspired countless blues songs.[9]

Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition.[10][11] In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.[12]

Early traditional blues verses often consisted of a single line repeated four times. However, the most common structure of blues lyrics today was established in the first few decades of the 20th century, known as the "AAB" pattern. This structure consists of a line sung over the first four bars, its repetition over the next four, and a longer concluding line over the last bars.[13] This pattern can be heard in some of the first published blues songs, such as "Dallas Blues" (1912) and "Saint Louis Blues" (1914). According to W.C. Handy, the "AAB" pattern was adopted to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times.[14] The lyrics are often sung in a rhythmic talk style rather than a melody, resembling a form of talking blues.

Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. African-American singers voiced their "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times".[15] This melancholy has led to the suggestion of an Igbo origin for blues, because of the reputation the Igbo had throughout plantations in the Americas for their melancholic music and outlook on life when they were enslaved.[16][17] Other historians have argued that there is little evidence of Sub-Sahelian influence in the blues as "elaborate polyrhythm, percussion on African drums (as opposed to European drums), [and] collective participation" which are characteristic of West-Central African music below the savannah, are conspicuously absent. According to the historian Paul Oliver, "the roots of the blues were not to be found in the coastal and forest regions of Africa. Rather... the blues was rooted in ... the savanna hinterland, from Senegambia through Mali, Burkina Faso, Northern Ghana, Niger, and northern Nigeria". Additionally, ethnomusicologist John Storm Roberts has argued that "The parallels between African savanna-belt string-playing and the techniques of many blues guitarists are remarkable. The big kora of Senegal and Guinea are played in a rhythmic-melodic style that uses constantly changing rhythms, often providing a ground bass overlaid with complex treble patterns, while vocal supplies a third rhythmic layer. Similar techniques can be found in hundreds of blues records".[18]

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