Do you want to spice up your blues guitar playing? In this blues guitar lesson, I will give you 5 blues guitar tips that will take your playing from novice to pro, if these techniques are applied.
By learning and applying just a few simple techniques, you can achieve better results with your blues guitar playing.
When trying out these tips, make sure and practice them everyday to get the best results. If you can’t practice them everyday, at least practice them 4 days a week. In about a month you will see a drastic improvement in your playing.
5 Blues Guitar Tips
- Start using your fingers. Many cool blues guitar licks are played with your fingers. The classic Albert King, SRV licks found in “The Sky is Crying”, are just one example of how to incorporate this technique into your blues guitar playing.
- Practice scales in the swing 8ths. This rhythm is commonly found in blues, and when practiced regularly, you will get a better feeling of the blues is supposed to sound.
- Learn intervals. This could be the single most important thing to learn when playing blues guitar, or any guitar for that matter. Intervals are simply the distance from one note to another.
By memorizing what these different distances sound like, you will start playing with sounds, instead of box patterns. In my DVD, Slide guitar Method 2 The Major Scale, I explain in detail how to learn intervals and incorporate them into your slide guitar playing.
- Practice to backing tracks or a metronome. This is a good way to get better all the way around. By practicing with a band, even if it’s just a recorded track on a CD, this is far better than practicing alone. Having a sense of rhythm is very important when playing lead guitar. If you don’t have any rhythm, everything you play will sound BAD!
If you practice to backing tracks or a mentronome everyday, you will ingrain rhythm into your playing. You will now play in time every time you pick up the guitar. How many times have you heard the guy who can play anything by himself, but give him a beat and he can’t stay with it. I promise you that you will get better by practicing with a backing track or metronome. That is why I include backing tracks with all of my Guitar Lesson DVDs .
- Memorize the 12 Bar Blues Progression. Sounds simple, but I have had people come in for lessons that could not play the 12 bar blues progression in all keys. It really is a “must know” if you ever want to really get good.
Well that’s it people, there are 5 Blues guitar tips that will help you learn how to play blues guitar. Learn them or else! Just kidding. You can just visit the crossroads and you’ll be playing like Mr. Johnson in no time! :)
