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There can’t be many folks who watch a blues man perform a tear jerking riff on the guitar and not wish it that it were him playing that cool stuff. There’s something very cool about it that is more than the actual movements. music doesn’t have to be super complicated or showy – Lightnin’ Hopkins would often play a simple bass pattern that could give you goose bumps. One of the first things we need to do is figure out what genre of blues guitar we would like to learn. This is crucial – there is a lot of practice ahead of you, so you should enthusiastic about the music.

When you mention ‘ blues guitar ‘, different ideas will spring to mind for a wide variety of people, depending on their generation and character. For some, the blues guitar of Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan is the goal. Other people search for the truth of the classic acoustic blues. For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll group all the electric styles together and simply name it ‘ electric ‘ , as I’m more interested in the foundation of all electric blues music, acoustic blues guitar. What are the different styles of acoustic blues and how could we identify? We might do this according to technique, sound or location. In truth, location appears to have had quite an impact on the regional styles, possibley because guitar players exchanged ideas from each other. In this way, regional styles developed.

Blues Guitar From The Delta

It’s supposed that this is the place where the blues began, although it’s more likely that it began in several areas round about the same time. Certainly, quite a few talented blues men moved to the North to perform in cities like Chicago or Detroit when they realized that they could make a living playing blues guitar without laboring sixteen hours every in the fields.

The early acoustic work by Muddy Waters (Walkin’ Blues) is a fine example of this authentic delta style. Incidentally, Waters insisted that his version of Walkin pre-dated that of Robert Johnson.

The delta blues sound could be described as quite simple, often basic and deeply emotional. The slide style of playing guitar was ideal for the delta. The weather was often hot with high humidity, which played havoc with the tuning of a wooden guitar. Slide songs performed in open G or D were easier to keep in tune, and additionally it was easy to compensate for tuning errors by adjusting the slide movement.

Songs from mississippi delta performed in standard tuning were predominantly in the Keys of A and E, and employed a monotonic bass pattern. The picking patterns were often simple but powerful. Artists to research are Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell.

And Now To Texas

The lone star state has always produced a continuous stream of blues men. In the days of the classic blues, some notable blues men born in Texas created a hallmark sound. A legendary singer, Lightnin’ Hopkins, played most often, using a monotic bass pattern. However, his picking thumb could move quickly and he was more diverse than the players from the Mississppi. Hopkins wrote many slow temp blues pieces in E, but could easily raise the beat for an audience that liked to dance a while. In his hay day, he could easily fill the local halls and made some records. However, after being ripped off by a recording manager, he forever after insisted on being paid before every gig. Listen to the music of Mance Lipscomb, another legend from the area.

Carolina Style

It’s strange how certain regions had a plethora of impressive guitarists, and this was the case in the state of South Carolina. A lot of the music seems to be a crossover between Texas blues and complicated ragtime styles, but this description is a bit too simple. Some players like Pink Anderson and Wille Walker were confident in playing the real alternating bass line normally associated with ragtime blues, but some players, like Floyd Council, could break out of the pattern whenever he wanted to accentuate some musical phrases in his songs. It’s clear that these musicians learned from each other, as we can hear identical patterns in the music of Blind Boy Fuller, Floyd and Gary Davis. All of these musicians moved in the same circles. Scrapper Blackwell wrote some fine examples of amazing acousic blues with clever patterns and attractive lyrics.

Ragtime Blues Guitar

Possibly the most complicated style of them all, the top peformers were true masters of the technique. Ragtime guitar songs normally employ chord structures around the keys of G and C, and featuring six or seven chords in place of the 3 or 4 associated with Mississippi or Texas pieces in E or A. (There are always the exceptions to the rule!) Other characteristics are a distinctive bass pattern alternating between two or three strings, a melody picked simultaneously on the higher strings and often lyrics punctuated by single string runs picked with thumb and finger. Possibly the two grand masters of ragtime blues were Arthur Blake and Reverend Gary Davis. Blind Blake’s bass picking was particulary slick, sometimes doubling up on the tempo and slipping his thumb between two strings, producing a highly syncopated sound. Reverend could really play all styles – blues, gospel and ragtime blues.

Some performers, such as Big Bill Broonzy, employed a monotic bass style, but was much more diverse than the majority of the Mississippi blues men. He might play Tin Pan Alley standards, ballads, and often move over towards jazz and ragtime in his approach. Broonzy created a style we might call Chicago swing.

Son House once quipped that many people ” … strum some sort of boogie in E and say it’s the blues – well it’s not !” When someone asked “What is the blues?”, Big Bill Broonzy replied “If you’ve got to ask you’ll never know”. How did the old blues guitarists produce that great sound? How can we play ‘real’ blues – ‘the real deal’ ? In this piece I’m going to examine some old blues mens styles and how you can learn their picking techniques.

Ragtime and Blues Guitar – From The Roots – Blind Arthur Blake

I always considered it a bit funny that there exists just one photograph of Arthur Blake, the King of Ragtime Blues Guitar. He cut more than one hundred records for Paramount in his playing life and seemed to be very popular. It seems logical to me that other snaps must be around somewhere? Even legendary Robert Johnson had 2 pictures taken and , in his time, he seemed less successful and famous than Blake.

Ry cooder says he thought Blake played guitar with a light feel, but some others maintain that he developed a hole in his right thumb, leading us to think that he had a heavy touch. On at least one song he shouts ‘boot that thing’ – which also makes me think that he could have had a heavy touch. I’ve experimented playing Blake every way possible, employing a gentleand heavy approach on different gauge strings, raising or lowering the height of the guitar bridge each time. It’s incredibly difficult to recreate the playfulness of many of his songs in G, such as That’ll Never Happen No More or Too Tight Blues.

You Can’t Have Enough Of Big Bill!

Listen to Big Bill Broonzy’s guitar style, for example – it’s fairly easy to work out where our fretting and right fingers should position themselves, but the all-important swinging tempo is something else entirely! It’s quite magical. This is a a quotation from Broonzy discussing timing – ” you can either ride on the front of the hoss, or on back of it and that’s what I do when I play my guitar”. His right hand thumb rhythm lags a little behind the beat and creates a ‘swing’ feel. Easy to describe, but have a go at it! Simultaneously, he’s utilizing only one finger for the high strings to produce more syncopation.

How Can We Learn To Play Blues Guitar ?

The answer is inevitably ‘from a guitarist who can play it’. There is a huge amount of guitar lessons advertised on the web, with various styles and prices. Some are even no cost! (A word of caution – generally in life, you get what you pay for.) All too more often than not, the tuition packages offered don’t match up to their advertising. Some times, for example, the picking doesn’t even match the tab! Some packages teach licks or tips to give your playing that ‘bluesy feel’, but is it the blues?

Find someone who can pick like the old guys. Ask around in your local area, or search the web. After you’ve found this man, ask him for lessons. If he doesn’t give lessons then listen to him and follow him around, if you need to. Like anything else in this life, if you want it badly enough, you’ll have to go for it. A real blues man is not interested in asking a fortune for their tuition.

Try not to listen to lots of modern blues guitar players . The old styles often become diluted and adapted too much, particularly the timing and accents on the beat. Hear to as many classic blues guitar tracks as you can, specially if there is film of the man playing . Take my word, you get an awful lot by just watching Big Bill Broonzy perform Hey Hey again and again and again.

Obviously, practice as much as you can – concentrating on the basic picking patterns. Control the movements of that right hand thumb! One hour early morning and an hour in the evening is minimum. You don’t really think Johnson sold his soul to the Devil do you? Of course not, but like Clapton, he took himself away for a year until he could play with the feeling we can clearly hear on his old records.

For me this is crucial – when you play blues , BE that song or that blues man. Their lives were difficult and completely unlike ours. Saying that, we all get the blues from time to time and that’s how we can relate to those men. The real blues is any of these things – a woman, having no job, wayward kids, rainy weather, mortality and many other things. Make it live it with your fingers.

Get the techniques first of all, don’t take it too fast with the basic building blocks and last but not least, put everything you’ve got into the music.

A search on the internet for guitar tuition in video format can be a daunting activity, even more so for the fledgling student with little experience. What are the best features of the most effective packages available? As you might imagine, it’s quite easy to identify common components that might help us make the right choice.

Simple To Follow

Of course it nearly goes without saying, any tuition for whatever subject needs to flow logically and be understood easily. Basic steps should be clearly described, and grow into more ideas. Musical theory has it’s place, but the new guitar player is basically impatient to start learning – he would like to play! This must be the first step, presenting the basic things which can be practised immediately. When all said and done, a thorough understanding of the first concepts will bring huge advantages later on in the instruction.

Musical Notation against Tablature

Traditionally, guitarists in the classical style learned to read musical notation and used written notes when playing or creating new material. Inevitably, this signifies a progress that is often perceived as a little slow for our modern way of doing things. During the 60s, blues guitar master Stephan Grossman and others, put together a system of notation that represented the frets and strings of the guitar neck. This short hand guitar notation could be rapidly learned and is an effective method for learning blues guitar, for example. A grid of six strings is numbered from the bottom bass string (1) to the top E string (6) and a number written on a string denotes which fret the finger should be placed above. A single line near the side of this number indicates that the thumb or finger is employed.

Image Presentation – What Should Appear On The Screen

There are several variations for this theme, but we can identify desirable elements of this all important visual aid to guitar lessons. The student must be made aware right at the beginning what the object of that instruction might be. If he is to learn a whole song, then that song needs to be played in exactly the same way as the detailed instruction shows in the complete lesson. In advance of the main instruction, any unusual techniques can be displayed and valuable tips given. Close ups of each hand is invaluable, and would be most effective shown seperately. Chord diagrams and guitar tablature may be overlaid on the video, so that students can follow the finger movements at the same time. This method is very effective for learning finger picking blues guitar.

More Desirable Features

When being taught a song, it’s nice to have lyrics at hand and a brief discussion about singing while playing at the same time. This might seem obvious, but it’s quite hard for a new student to play and sing at the same! The full tablature and words might be provided as a seperate Word or PDF file, which can be printed out and used at the student’s leisure. An MP3 audio file could additionally be provided, so that the instruction could be accessed casually at any time. However, if the video file is in the correct format, it could be viewed using an iPad or iPhone.

Guitar “action” just means the distance of the string over the twelfth fret, and a reasonably low action is a must for any acoustic blues guitar player. If you like to perform several styles, then a medium action should be aimed for. If it’s not high enough the strings will make a buzzing sound – if they are too high it will be hard to fret the strings. On the other side of the coin, some guitarists might prefer a significantly higher action, for example if you play blues guitar and use the guitar mostly for playing slide.

You can set action by changing the height of the saddle, which of course sets the distance between the strings and frets along the length of the neck. First of all, measure the distance of the low E and high E strings from the twelfth. For a general purpose playing action that suits finger picking and strumming, the distance at the twelfth should be a little less than three millimetres for the low E, and around two millimetres for the high E.

As the 12th fret is precisely half way along the string, you should write down the amounts by which the action needs to be raised or lowered for both E strings, and raise or lower the saddle by double that amount. Most blues guitar players need a medium action.

If the saddle needs to be lowered, you can file away material from the base of the saddle. If the saddle needs to be a little higher, a shim of hardwood of the right thickness should be inserted under the base. You should additionally ensure that the base of the saddle is completely flat, which is very important if it’s an electro acoustic guitar, because an uneven saddle can lead to problems with the pickup response.

Adjusting The Neck

Most modern acoustic guitars are equipped with a truss rod, which adjusts either at the heel of the neck inside the body, or at the headstock. This rod counteracts concave bend, by generating a force in the neck opposite to that caused by the tension in the strings. The strings tend to pull the neck into a curve. We want a small curve, so that the strings don’t touch any frets when they vibrate after being hit hard.

Take off the truss rod cover, if your guitar is so equipped, and apply a capo on the first. Fret the sixth string at the 14th fret with one hand. Using a feeler gauge, measure the distance from the top of the 5th fret and the bottom of the sixth string. There should be a small gap, between 0.15 and 0.05 mm. If you are experiencing string buzz, the rod could be adjusted too tight, flattening the neck too much. Loosen the rod a bit, check the measurement again and play some. If your guitar neck too much curvature, then tighten the truss rod. On Martin guitars, use a five millimetre allen wrench to rotate the truss rod adjusting nut clockwise to straighten the neck and counter-clockwise to add some bend.

Medium gauge strings (.013″-.056″) exert more force, and so require a higher truss rod tension to counteract the stronger string pull. This results in more volume, sustain and more rounded guitar tone. One final word, if you find that you need a lot of force, or you’re not comfortable carrying out this adjustment, take your guitar to your Service Center.

By Jim Bruce

If you have a passion for learning to play blues guitar, then doing a search for blues guitar lessons on good old Youtube will give you a ton of free online lessons to start you off learning acoustic blues. For the majority guitar students learning how to play the guitar, watching a video can be almost as good as a live teacher. Some people even prefer following online videos instead of taking a class because blues guitar lessons on YouTube are available twenty four a day, 7 days a week, so you watch a lessons any time that’s convenient.

If you search Google to learn how to play blues guitar, you’ll find that many people have uploaded tuition videos on sites like YouTube. While watching videos will assist in helping you learn basic principles, it’s best not to rely completely on them. This is because following various videos by different guitarists can get confusing, particularly for a beginner wanting to learn techniques used when playing blues guitar. The bonus of taking guitar tuition by watching videos is that it is much cheaper when you compare the cost to a private guitar teacher. As watching videos on YouTube is free, it’s a no-brainer if you’re a beginner to begin by watching videos there.

To make things easier to take on board, look for basic tutorials with a slow pace and instructions. This will make it easier to learn the detailed techniques and observe close ups shots of the correct left and right hand placement on the guitar, and in this way you’ll get a better feel for the tuition. Viewing authentic blues guitar on YouTube will help you learn the real picking techniques used by legendary blues guitarists in a quick and efficient manner. A lot of people have learned tricks and picking patterns through these online lessons.

If you search online to learn how to play blues guitar, you’ll find that many people have uploaded video lessons on sites similar to YouTube. While watching videos will help you take on board techniques, you shouldn’t rely exclusively on this method. This is because watching various videos by different people can be confusing, especially if you are a beginner wanting to learn techniques used when playing blues guitar. A huge bonus of learning to play guitar by watching video lessons is that it is a lot cheaper when comparing the cost to a private music teacher. As watching Youtube videos is free, it’s no contest if you’re a beginner to start learning by watching videos there.

To make learning the blues easier to assimilate, check out for basic tutorials with a slow pace and instructions. This will make it more comfortable to learn important basic techniques and observe close up clips of the correct hand placement on the guitar, and in this way you’ll get a better feel for the tuition. Watching authentic blues guitar on YouTube will help you learn the real tricks used by classic blues guitarists in a quick and efficient manner. A lot of people have learned tricks and techniques through these online lessons, and you can be one of them.

In order for you to get started learning how to play the blues on guitar, you could start off by learning and constantly repeating blues riffs and essential chord progressions. Once you get a hang for those 2 things, and are comfortable with your hand movements, you’ll be better placed to understand the various kinds of blues music together with with the different ways in which it’s played. It’s usually best to being by learning the simple chords and scales, before progress slowly to advanced levels.

When looking for blues guitar videos on YouTube, it’s important to make sure that the videos cover certain topics and be of excellent quality. The most popular video lessons use close ups showing both hands, in order to avoid confusion about what strings and frets are used. The videos also needs to include a verbal explanation, slow-motion demonstrations and full speed demonstrations.

As a student guitarist beginning to learn the acoustic blues, just grab your guitar, head on over to YouTube and look up blues guitar tuition. Let the video lessons show you the basics of learning to play blues guitar. If you combine these lesson videos with your desire to master and practice blues guitar, it’s only a matter of time before you’re playing the music you love.

Jim Bruce is a working blues man making a living playing and teaching in Europe. His acoustic blues guitar lessons are fast becoming the standard to reach for acoustic blues guitar picking.

Main website: http://www.play-blues-guitar.eu/
Youtube Video – blues guitar

How to tune the guitar is probably one of the most important things we need to know and needs to be perfected before we can learn how to make music. This can be singularly frustrating. Even after careful tuning each string, we can often hear that the sound isn’t quite accurate enough – sometimes it can sound definitely bad! To make matters worse, we sometimes find that the strings seem in tune for one chord, but not for some others. If you play blues, for example, it’s normally necessary to adjust the tuning when wanting to play another song in another style and key. If you want to learn how to play blues guitar, country or folk, it all sounds a lot better with a tuned instrument. I’ll go through the common method for rapidly tuning the strings. Of course, if you have access to a digital tuner, it’s a great help. However, most inexpensive tuners are accurate only to about one percent. This doesn’t seem much, but if two strings side by side are both out by 1% in opposite directions, it’s quite evident.

Basic method of tuning

Of course, you need good hearing, but the big issue with the basic method of tuning is that the adjacent string is tuned to the preceding one, so any error is transmitted and possible made worse across the strings.

First step, the low E string is tuned to a known source – a piano or pitch pipe – for example. Hold down the bass E string on the 5th fret and tune the next string (A) until the sound is the same.

Press down the A string at the fifth fret and adjust the next string (D) so it sounds identical.

Fret the D string and adjust the G string so that it sounds the same. Fret the G string at the fourth fret and tune the string adjacent (B) until it sounds the same.

Last of all, fret the B string on the fifth and adjust the high E until it sounds the same. Strum a few chords and re-tune, if needed.

Most guitarists employ this way of tuning, as it is easy. Often, while performing live, I would adjust particular strings depending upon the chords I play for a specific song.

Relative Pitch Guitar Tuning to One String

We can significantly reduce tuning errors brought in with the above quick method by adjusting all of the strings to just a single string. This way of tuning has the bass E for the reference, fretted at different places and also using harmonics at times. When harmonics are employed, the notes produced by two strings are compared across an octave – you will understand this better when you go through the procedure underneath.

The low E string is tuned to a known source, just like we did before, and the A string is tuned with the bass E string held down at the fifth fret. This is exactly the same as the previous method used.

Press the E string down at the tenth fret and adjust the D string until it sounds identical.

Press down the bass E string again at the third fret and regulate the G string so that it sounds like the same note, but AN OCTAVE above. The process is a lot simpler than it sounds.

Tune the B-string by holding down the seventh fret of the low E, then regulating the B string so that you hear the same note, but again, an octave above.

To finish off, fret the bass E at the twelth to tune the last E string. These last notes need to sound sound exactly the same.

Play a few chords and make any adjustments, if necessary. With some practice, this method is more accurate than the basic method we all know, and doesn’t take much longer to achieve. Even though professionals use both of the above ways of tuning for speed during performances, it can be difficult in noisy places. In addition, some performances need perfect tuning, such as when recording in a studio, for example. In this case, I would use a strobe tuner, which are commonly set to be 0.1% accurate. By contrast, an inexpensive electronic device is accurate to just one percent.

Many people recognize the name of Scott Joplin, the African American man born in Texas in eighteen sixty eight. For many people, he is the grand father of the musical style called ‘ragtime’, and more precisely, ragtime piano.

If Joplin were alive today, he would be a rich man indeed, in view of the fact that his tunes are used around the world as film sound tracks and for many other purposes (who can forget the ragtime piano pieces in the wonderful film ‘The Sting’ with Paul Newman and Robert Redford?) Before we talk about the related genre of ragtime blues, perhaps we should understand a little about the origins of original ragtime played on.

Scott Joplin – Genius Pianist And Brothel Musician

Joplin trained to play piano quite early on in his childhood and soon left home to make his living as a pianist. For an African American in those times, this meant performing any where that would offer to pay him. In the early years, he often played in brothels and sleazy bars. Nevertheless, being classically trained, he dreamed of creating his own style and eventually having his creations acknowledged as serious work.

Coupling his training in European classical piano with his natural instinct, and a fiercely proud legacy, he invented a style of music that was complex, but also rhythmic with a complex beat. This rhythmic style of playing was dubbed ‘syncopation’ and became known as ragtime, probably after a dance prevalent amongst the negro communities of that era, the ‘rag’. In this way, ragtime piano was forged by the joining of two different cultures.

Ragtime Blues – From The Piano To The Guitar

Even though the ragtime tempo was complicated, the piano bass line had a distinctive cadence and a basic pattern, moving between two bass notes with an alternating rhythm. At that time, groups of ‘minstrel’ string musicians moved through the land to perform for people in little townships, often featuring banjo and guitar. Although blues guitar music can be extremely diverse, the two extremes could be characterized as the sombre, emotional blues guitar music of the mississippi at one end, and the ragtime ‘Piedmont’ way of picking on the other. Of course, other styles were evident, such as blues guitar Chicago style.

The ragtime way of picking guitar was great for dancing, generally had quite a fast, rhythmic beat and was a direct relation to the ragtime style of piano playing. Guitar players of the time intended to emulate the complicated piano sounds, which was a tricky thing to acheive, because the guitar has only six or twelve! (some years later, when guitars were amplified electrically, the guitar tried to copy the wail of the saxophone.)

Some talented musicians realized that the picking hand thumb could pass between two or more notes, while the fingers may play the melody – ragtime blues guitar, often called the happy blues, came into being.

Ragtime Blues Guitar Come Of Age

Some guitarists expanded this style and it became a commercially successful sound, most notably Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell and many many others. Still other performers incorporated the style in their existing performances in order that their act had a more diverse appeal when they play the blues. It should be noted that not many artists played at the same technical level of skill as Gary Davis, Blind Blake or Willie Walker.

Anyone knowledgable about the classic blues, either guitar or piano, can tell you the names of the ‘ orginal bluesmen ‘. These were the folks who started it all. None of them needed to try and work out what blues was , they were the blues! Performers such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy are some examples .

It’s obvious how Robert Johnson’s legend became embellished as time passed . Only two likenesses survived , and his contemporaries that survived to the 70s told interested enquirers about his mysterious meeting with the devil at the crossroads .

I didn’t meet Big Bill Broonzy, but luckily there are some old film clips left for us to enjoy , which can be found on Youtube. I’ve embedded one of these videos underneath – essential for anyone wanting to play blues.

Some years ago, I was sent an email by a musician who played in a group that was the second act to Broonzy while touring England during the late 1950s . He told me about a big man who drank whisky , seemed to be laughing much of the time and recalled tall stories a lot of the time. His driving blues guitar style was almost impossible to re-create , and even now , almost no-one has managed to duplicate Broonzy’s wonderful feel .

A while ago, around 1998, I found myself living in Indiana and was always on the look out for the sound of old-style blues. An acquaintance related that there was a blues bar named ‘Buck’s Working Man’s Pub’an hour’s drive away in the city of La Porte. After work, I eagerly started my car and set off .

Given directions by some locals , I made my way along main street, turned left at the second corner past the municipal buildings and traversed the train tracks to the more disreputable quarter of town . Maybe now I’ll get to see a slice of the real blues. The bar wasn’t up market , you could say. I got myself a beer and walked to a room round the back, following the music of a loud electric blues guitar .

The music room was about half empty . Chicago blues isn’t really what I was interested in – I was more intrigued by the old acoustic blues guitar players . An elderly chap at my table told me the locals had hired the band as it was the bar owner’s birthday today. He didn’t speak again after that.

The musicians ended the number and the singer addressed the people in the audience . “Happy Birthday, Pinetop”, he shouted , and carried on “Ladies and gentlemen, Pinetop will now play a little something for us.” The old guy next to me stood up and walked off to the stage, where he sat down by a large piano. Pinetop performed a slow boogie which became increasingly complex with every passing bar. I mentally kicked myself as I realised I’d been at the same table as a real master, legendary bluesman.

Pinetop played only a couple pieces and then walked past me into the next room. I didn’t see him again the rest of the evening . With 20-20 hindsight , I thought about the questions I should have asked him , but maybe it’s just as well. It was the guy’s birthday and he could have been put out by a stranger’s question . Legends are just people, you understand .

As the years pass , the bluesmen are fading away , to be replaced with modern legends. I recall one time I drove all the way across Indiana and Michigan so that I could see a more modern blues legend, who must remain nameless , because of his words when we met . Thrilled , I suggested that it was a terrific thing to do, to live the life of the original blues performers – travelling around performing the blues. “Not at all”, he replied “It’s a drag and I’d much rather be at home doing something else !”

We must remember – blues legends are also human .

by Ian Fraser

Learning blues guitar takes good instruction and practice, but not just any practice. Since playing the blues is as much about feel as it is about skill you need to put yourself in a performance scenario every chance you get.

Since most of us don’t have a full band to jam with a couple of times a week you can substitute with some good blues backing tracks.

What are Backing Tracks

Backing tracks, sometimes called jam tracks, are professionally recorded arrangements of a 12 bar blues pattern in a particular key. Often these tracks include bass, drums, guitar and maybe even piano. The tracks will often last much longer then a regular song to provide you with lots of time to jam along with.

The Secret of Great Players

Blues backing tracks have been the secret of many great blues guitarists over the past few years. They offer you a full band track to practice along to, create you own riffs and really begin to feel the music. With consistent practice using jam tracks you’ll find that when you do jam with other musicians it will be second nature.

Where to Find Backing Tracks

Thanks to the web there are tons of great free and paid blues backing tracks. There are packages of tracks available for purchase from $20-$50. These paid tracks are generally going to be of higher quality then free, but they won’t necessarily improve you’re playing any more.

The key is to practice and do it often. Also practice in a variety of keys, not just the same key over and over. With consistent use of blues jam tracks in your practice routine you’ll become a much better lead blues guitar player then if you spent hours and hours memorizing scales and techniques on your own without the use of other instruments.

About the Author:

Ready to learn more about the blues? Why not take some lessons from home with a blues guitar dvd or online blues guitar lessons. These self study video lessons are a great alternative to private instruction and require far less time and money.

Article Courtesy of: Go Articles

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