Guitar Articles

Blues Guitar Instruction 

If you want to take some blues guitar instruction, you can do so on either electric or acoustic guitar. You can also play with a pick or with finger style. What you will want to master in your blues guitar instruction is the twelve bar blues chord progression, dominant seventh type chords that are a big part of the blues sound, and the blues scales that go with these chords for creating solos. In this article we will cover the basics of the twelve-bar blues chord progression.

Within the blues guitar instruction there are many different sub-genres. We often categorize these different styles into five basic groups: Delta Blues, Chicago Blues, Texas Blues, Rock Blues, and Jazz Blues. At the heart of all these styles, however is the twelve bar blues progression. The basic progression is shown below in the key of G, an extremely guitar friendly key. 

The twelve-bar blues as presented here is distilled to its essence. Three four-bar phrases in four-four time, using major chords only, with a dominant seven chord in the third phrase. You can use this progression for pretty much any style of blues guitar instruction, including Country Blues. Measures nine and ten, however, might raise a few eyebrows. Just think of this progression as a template to use for creating more interesting variations. Let's adjust the third phrase to give it a more traditional blues feel.

That sounds a little better! Staying in the third phrase, if you are playing more than one chorus use a D7 chord in the last measure. This will help lead into subsequent choruses.

We can also make a simple adjustment in our blues guitar instruction to the second measure of the first phrase to make the progression a little more interesting. Here are the complete twelve measures again with our adjustments: 

We have now built up our original progression to what most musicians would consider a standard twelve-bar blues. Although its good as it is, if we want to bluesy up the sound a little more, we can use dominant seventh chords throughout, G7 for G, and C7 for C.

Once you have a thorough understanding of this chord progression with our blues guitar instruction, you should learn a few basic variations. We are again going to play with the third phrase, turning it into a basic jazz version of the blues with a II7-V7 pattern. In G this translates into the chords Am7 and D7: 

This is still the blues, but now it has a slightly different feel. To jazz it up even more, change the C7 and D7 chords to C9 and D9 chords. Now we're swinging like the masters!

I hope you have enjoyed this brief introduction blues guitar instruction and the twelve-bar blues. Take the time to transpose the above progressions to other keys, especially C, E and A and play around with the chords a bit. For you jazz players, don't forget the keys of B-flat and F.