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How To Play The Blues - First Of All Choose The Style!
There can't be many folks who hear a blues man perform a heart stopping riff on the guitar and not want to do the same thing. There is something really cool attached to it that transcends the actual movements. music doesn't have to be incredibly complicated or flashy - Lightnin' Hopkins would often play an easy bass line that could give you goose bumps. One of the first things we need to do is decide what genre of blues guitar we'd want to play. This is crucial - you have a lot of practice time in front of you, so you should enthusiastic about the music.
When you mention ' blues guitar ', various ideas will occur to a wide variety of people, depending on their age and personality. For many, the blues guitar of Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan is the ideal. Other people search for the true authenticity of the classic acoustic blues. For the purposes of this article, I'll lump all the electric styles into one category and simply dub it ' electric ' , as I'm more interested in the roots of all electric music, acoustic blues guitar. What are the various styles of classic acoustic and how should we identify? We might do this according to technique, sound or location. In fact, where the guitarists where located appears to have had quite an effect on the regional styles, maybe due to the fact that musicians took ideas from each other. This is how regional musical styles developed.
Blues Guitar From The Delta. It's supposed that Delta is the region where it all started, although it probably originated in several regions round about the same time. Certainly, several talented blues men traveled North to play in cities like Chicago and Detroit when they realized that they could get paid without laboring 15 hours a day in the fields. The early acoustic songs of Muddy Waters (Walkin' Blues) is a fine example of this authentic delta style. Incidentally, Waters said that his version of Walkin pre-dated that of Robert Johnson.
Delta blues guitar can be described as quite simple, often basic and intensely emotional. The slide style of playing guitar was perfect for the delta. The weather was often hot with high humidity, which played havoc with a wooden instrument's tuning. Slide songs played in open G or D were easier to keep in tune, and additionally it was easy to adjust for tuning errors by moving the slide around. Songs from mississippi delta picked in normal tuning were more often in the Keys of E and A, and used a monotonic bass pattern. The picking patterns were quite simple but powerful. Artists to research are Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell.
The lone star state has always produced a continuous stream of blues guitarists. Back in the early days, several notable players originating from Texas formed a distinctive musical style. A giant blues man, Lightnin' Hopkins, played mostly in E and A, employing a monotonic bass pattern. However, his picking thumb could move quickly and he was more inventive than the players in the. Hopkins penned many slow temp blues songs in E, but could quicky up the beat for an audience that wanted to dance a while. In his hay day, he easily packed the local halls and made some records. However, after being ripped off by a recording studio, he forever after insisted on being paid before every gig. Check out the music of Mance Lipscomb, another legend from the area.
It's strange how certain regions had a plethora of impressive guitarists, as was the case in South Carolina. A lot of the music appears to be a link from ragtime styles, but that description is a little too simplistic. Several such as Pink Anderson and Willie Walker were very comfortable with the real alternating bass line associated with ragtime guitar, but others, like Floyd Council, could leave the pattern whenever he wanted to reinforce certain musical phrases in his songs. It's obvious that these musicians exchanged ideas, as we can identify similar patterns in the music of Gary Davis, Fuller and Council. All of these guitarists moved in the same circles. Scrapper Blackwell wrote some fine examples of amazing acoustic blues with clever lyrics.
Possibly the most complicated blues style of them all, the best exponents are real masters of the technique. Ragtime guitar patterns generally have chord structures around the keys of G and C, and featuring six or seven chords rather than the 3 or 4 associated with delta type blues pieces in E or A. (Of course,there are the exceptions to the rule!) Other features are a distinctive bass pattern alternating between 2 or 3 strings, a melody played simultaneously on the treble strings and often lyrics accentuated by single string runs picked with alternating finger and thumb. Possible the two supreme legends of ragtime blues were Arthur Blake and Reverend Gary Davis. Blake's bass picking was particularly slick, often doubling up on the tempo and slipping his picking thumb from one bass string to the next, producing a very rhythmic sound. Davis could truly play all styles - blues, gospel and ragtime blues.
Other performers, like as Big Bill Broonzy, played a monotic bass picking pattern, but was considerably more diverse than most delta blues men. He would perform standards, ballads, and often cross over into jazz and ragtime in his approach. Broonzy created a style we could call Chicago swing.
When you mention ' blues guitar ', various ideas will occur to a wide variety of people, depending on their age and personality. For many, the blues guitar of Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan is the ideal. Other people search for the true authenticity of the classic acoustic blues. For the purposes of this article, I'll lump all the electric styles into one category and simply dub it ' electric ' , as I'm more interested in the roots of all electric music, acoustic blues guitar. What are the various styles of classic acoustic and how should we identify? We might do this according to technique, sound or location. In fact, where the guitarists where located appears to have had quite an effect on the regional styles, maybe due to the fact that musicians took ideas from each other. This is how regional musical styles developed.
Blues Guitar From The Delta. It's supposed that Delta is the region where it all started, although it probably originated in several regions round about the same time. Certainly, several talented blues men traveled North to play in cities like Chicago and Detroit when they realized that they could get paid without laboring 15 hours a day in the fields. The early acoustic songs of Muddy Waters (Walkin' Blues) is a fine example of this authentic delta style. Incidentally, Waters said that his version of Walkin pre-dated that of Robert Johnson.
Delta blues guitar can be described as quite simple, often basic and intensely emotional. The slide style of playing guitar was perfect for the delta. The weather was often hot with high humidity, which played havoc with a wooden instrument's tuning. Slide songs played in open G or D were easier to keep in tune, and additionally it was easy to adjust for tuning errors by moving the slide around. Songs from mississippi delta picked in normal tuning were more often in the Keys of E and A, and used a monotonic bass pattern. The picking patterns were quite simple but powerful. Artists to research are Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell.
The lone star state has always produced a continuous stream of blues guitarists. Back in the early days, several notable players originating from Texas formed a distinctive musical style. A giant blues man, Lightnin' Hopkins, played mostly in E and A, employing a monotonic bass pattern. However, his picking thumb could move quickly and he was more inventive than the players in the. Hopkins penned many slow temp blues songs in E, but could quicky up the beat for an audience that wanted to dance a while. In his hay day, he easily packed the local halls and made some records. However, after being ripped off by a recording studio, he forever after insisted on being paid before every gig. Check out the music of Mance Lipscomb, another legend from the area.
It's strange how certain regions had a plethora of impressive guitarists, as was the case in South Carolina. A lot of the music appears to be a link from ragtime styles, but that description is a little too simplistic. Several such as Pink Anderson and Willie Walker were very comfortable with the real alternating bass line associated with ragtime guitar, but others, like Floyd Council, could leave the pattern whenever he wanted to reinforce certain musical phrases in his songs. It's obvious that these musicians exchanged ideas, as we can identify similar patterns in the music of Gary Davis, Fuller and Council. All of these guitarists moved in the same circles. Scrapper Blackwell wrote some fine examples of amazing acoustic blues with clever lyrics.
Possibly the most complicated blues style of them all, the best exponents are real masters of the technique. Ragtime guitar patterns generally have chord structures around the keys of G and C, and featuring six or seven chords rather than the 3 or 4 associated with delta type blues pieces in E or A. (Of course,there are the exceptions to the rule!) Other features are a distinctive bass pattern alternating between 2 or 3 strings, a melody played simultaneously on the treble strings and often lyrics accentuated by single string runs picked with alternating finger and thumb. Possible the two supreme legends of ragtime blues were Arthur Blake and Reverend Gary Davis. Blake's bass picking was particularly slick, often doubling up on the tempo and slipping his picking thumb from one bass string to the next, producing a very rhythmic sound. Davis could truly play all styles - blues, gospel and ragtime blues.
Other performers, like as Big Bill Broonzy, played a monotic bass picking pattern, but was considerably more diverse than most delta blues men. He would perform standards, ballads, and often cross over into jazz and ragtime in his approach. Broonzy created a style we could call Chicago swing.
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