These 6 free
Blues Guitar Survival Guide #18: Tweaking the 3rd
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One of the best tips I can pass along that will almost instantly make you sound better is learning how to tweak the third of the scale. In a blues we are very often playing over a dom7 chord which contains a natural 3rd. The minor pentatonic scale contains a flat 3rd. This is a potential problem as those two notes are a 1/2 step apart and can really be unpleasant. To remedy this we can bend the flat 3rd to either the natural 3rd or the ever cool quarter step bend. Getting control over this bend it essential to playing
Blues Guitar Survival Guide #21: Albert King Style Bends
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Albert King is certainly one of the most influential blues
Blues Guitar Survival Guide #42: Straight Rock Blues
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I love a straight rock feel. Many bands from the Stones, to Zep, to Bad Co. to The Black Crows, have used this feel in some of the most classic blues influenced rock tunes ever. The focal point is the straight eighth note as opposed to the swing eighth note so commonly heard in the blues. I chose G because of some of the cool usages of the open strings as both a lead and rhythm player that we can take advantage of. The main concepts here are bends, double stops, chord tones, vibrato, and tweaking the third and seventh. So there is a lot going on in what sounds like a fairly basic blues rock solo!
Blues Guitar Survival Guide #43: Straight Rock Blues – Breakdown
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There is a lot going on here so take it slowly. The main take home is the bend aspect, I am using a lot of half step bends to articulate the chord tones. I really love these because we can get a great bluesy sound by working on the notes in between. Very often in the blues we will stay a little shy of the natural 3rd when bending up to it. Why? Well it sounds bluesier, it’s that rub the bend creates that gives the note the soul we are looking for. If we fret the natural 3rd, it will sound great but bright. So it becomes a matter of choice, so if your choice is bluesy use the bend.
Blues Guitar Survival Guide #45: Rumba Blues
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One of the keys to soloing smoothly and mixing scales is to learn the notes we want to use in the same position on the neck. As you run through this study you can see that I am changing from D major to D minor pentatonic in the same position on the neck. I am not jumping around, when I see guys do that it tells me that they don’t know the
Blues Guitar Survival Guide #48: Classic Texas Blues
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I am going for a classic Texas blues sound here in style of SRV and Albert King and as you can see I am really sticking to very few notes. I am trying to get the most out of the little box position I am in which is the upper 3 strings of what I call fingering number 2 of the minor pentatonic scale. This is all Albert King. It sounds a lot like SRV’s version of Texas Flood which sounds a lot like Albert King’s Blues Power. I am a huge fan of Stevie’s and he was a gateway to the blues for me along with Zeppelin, but when I first heard Albert it was clear who influenced Stevie. It is always humbling to listen to someone like Albert King, the clarity and pure emotion that comes through in his playing is undeniable. As a player this is what I am striving for all the time.
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