Guitar How-To

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Playing blues guitar is often made too complex by guitarists trying to explain their approach to the blues to newbie guitar players. To learn how to play blues guitar is actually quite simple. Some bands have devised complicated arrangements of blues songs, others prefer to stay with the fairly simple way of presenting blues songs. To add to the mix there are also different kinds of blues coming from different parts of America.

Let’s look at a blues guitar chord progression. It’s a very common progression called the I IV V. The Roman numerals represent the chords of whatever key you are playing in. So if you are playing in the key of A you would be using the chords A, D and E. Just so you understand the process here, if you take the key as a simple octave with the root note, or first note as A, the fourth (IV) note will be D and the fifth note (V) will be E. In blues the seventh chords are used for the IV and V chords, so the chords you will be using will be A, D7 and E7. If you want to play in the key of E your chords will be E A7 and B7.

Next you will need a song to learn on. The twelve bar blues is the most popular and most easily recognized form of blues song and it looks like:

I I I I IV IV I I V IV I I/V

which is just showing you how the music is divided up with the first four bars using the I chord, and so on. The I/V is where you split the last bar into two to serve as an introduction to the next verse.

You need to get the feel of the blues, so even if your chord changes are not up to scratch yet, you can still play the bass notes along with a song or a backing track, so if you are in the key of A you just play the notes: four bars of A, two bars of D, two bars of A, one bar of E, one bar of D, one bar of A and the final bar has two beats of A and two beats of E.

Now you can see why learning blues can get a little complicated in the explaining, but you will immediately see the simplicity as you learn some songs.

Here is a YouTube video to start you off:

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When you buy an acoustic guitar you tend to be distracted with learning how to play it and you can forget to think about how to take care of it. Here is a quick rundown on how to take care of your acoustic guitar. YOur acoustic guitar is a delicate instrument held together by a balance of tensions coming from different directions and some glue.

When you are sitting playing your guitar you will possibly find in hot weather that you forearm sticks to the front of the guitar. Not only is this awkward when you are trying to play but it could leave a mark in the wood of your guitar. If you do not want to wear a shirt with long sleeves while you play your acoustic guitar, try and put a clean cloth between the body of the guitar and the body of the guitarist.

Although you may be sorely tempted, do not polish your acoustic guitar. A lot of guitars have a very thin finish and will not take any kind of polish that contains abrasive materials. Also if your polish is the white kind it could get into the cracks in the wood and draw attention to them.

If you use a wax polish it could form a thick layer over the wood in a short time. It is very tedious and in the long run, futile to be polishing a layer of wax instead of the actual wood. Try to avoid this. If you use an oil base polish it will tend to darken the wood of your guitar. The use of an oily polish could ultimately lead to the guitar developing cracks.

The grease from your fingers gets transferred to the guitar strings so part of taking care of your acoustic guitar involves wiping the strings and the body of the guitar with a lint-free cloth. Make sure it’s clean.

Many guitarists will recommend applying lemon oil to the ebony fingerboard of your guitar. The truth is that once it has left the factory the fingerboard is in as good a shape as it is going to get and no amount of lemon oil is going to improve it, even though it does give it a nice sheen for about thirty seconds after you put it on.

So you see that you don’t really need to know much to know how to take care of your acoustic guitar but you do need to care a lot.

Here is a YouTube video on acoustic guitar care . . .

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When I first picked up the guitar I took lessons from my local teacher. I was told if I completed a certain number of lessons with him I would know how to play rhythm guitar. That may have been true back then but now if you know how to play rhythm guitar you really know alot more about the guitar than a few chord shapes. The basic function of the rhythm guitar player is still the same – providing a rhythmic backing for the band but the rhythm guitar player’s backing can be quite creative and demanding, not to mention that accompanying the lead guitarist now can mean to all intents and purposes, being a “second” lead guitarist.

The lead guitar player in a band plays melody lines. The melody lines are in the shape of licks, scales and riffs. The rhythm guitar player provides a background to the lead guitarists efforts by playing chords. So in order to do this, the rhythm guitar player must have a range of open chords at his disposal and he also must have the basic movable chord shapes and some idea of what to do with them. So knowing the chords is not enough. You should be able to play them in your sleep if you have to. This takes practice.

As a rhythm guitar player you will know your open chords and power chords. With practice you will be able to know which key a singer is in just by hearing him sing. The first thing you should learn are the open chords. Most of the music you learn will be based on three chords. You will learn about chord progressions and the use of sevenths to add variety to your rhythm guitar playing. Chords that make good music together are called families. The best way to learn and practice chords is to learn one family of chords at a time. In the key of A the chords in the family are A, D and E. In the key of D your chords are D, E minor, G and A. In the key of G the chord family is G, A minor, C, D, and E minor. In the key of C your chord family is C, D minor, E minor, F and G.

To get both hands working as a rhythm guitar player you will need to know some strumming patterns. These are fun to learn and after a while you will be making up your own. As a rhythm guitarist you will be exercising your judgement about when and how to deliver the chords behind the singer and lead guitar, and strumming patterns will be part of how you do it.

Open chords are the basis of your rhythm guitar playing but power chords will add some variety and excitement to your sound. They are easy to learn and sound really cool. You will end up devoting alot of time to learning how to use power chords simply because they yield such a great sound for little effort.

So when can you start playing rhythm guitar in a band? When you can keep time and have a few strumming patterns in your repertoire. Alot of learning how to play rhythm guitar is in doing it onstage with your band.

Here is a YouTube video on rhythm guitar . . .

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