FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Blues Guitar Tablature

Question:
I know how to jam out a twelve bar pattern and can play and improvise a few good licks over it, but I wanna get in a band playing blues. Does anyone have any good advice for practicing? Are there any good blues tabs on the net, not just Srv ones?

Answer:
If you enjoy learning via tablature, then check out www.truefire.com and go to the Music Instruction section, and then go to the Blues category. Hunt around those pages (nothing is in any particular order - alphabetically or otherwise - unfortunately) until you find Blues Primer - Parts 1&2 by Keith Wyatt. It'll cost you $ 5.50 to download, but it's worth every penny. You get a tablature download (.PDF file) and about 35 minutes of a MP3 tutorial covering almost every aspect of Blues. You may THINK you know the 12 bar - but these two lessons can teach ANYONE alot. It covers rhythm aspects: basic rhythm shuffles, bass-doubling, Chicago horn-style progressions, T-bone Walker style slides; and it also gets into alot of lead playing theory: major/minor pentatonic, blues, and mixolodian scales - how/when to use one over another, some neat Hendrix, Freddie and Albert King licks (including using Albert's famous major-third bend) and a whole bunch of good, solid theory and information. It's not presented as rocket science - it's all in very simple tab - and it moves along pretty quickly so you won't be bored - I can assure you of that. I downloaded it awhile back and I find myself still going back over it again and again - it's really good foundation-building kinda stuff. I even went so far as to make a cassette tape copy of the lesson so I could take it in the car with me on roadtrips - I keep hearing new things every time I listen to it. For 5 bucks, I've found it to be immensely more useful than ANY individual song tab.