In this article we are going to point out a few things that you should consider before you buy your electric guitar, offering tips from where to buy to playing the instrument.

1.Electric guitars are best for beginners

Let me openly state that learning the electric guitar is definitely the best option for the beginner. This is mostly because the strings are softer and easier to press down than its acoustic sister. Because of this your fingertips will hurt less and you will be less inclined to give up!

Also, the electric guitar is an amplified instrument and amps allow you to play clean or distorted. Rock fans will be familiar with distortion – this effectively means the sound is a lot heavier than the default setting (which is clean)

2. Buy a guitar in a package

If this is your first guitar I strongly recommend that you purchase a package. There are so many benefits of doing this over buying the instrument by itself. The most glaringly obvious benefit is because the package will include basic accompaniments such as the amp, a strap and some spare strings.

3. Invest in a good great song book

Get a book that will teach you songs that you love by artists you appreciate. There are hundreds of them out there, from the basics of Oasis through to the more technical Red Hot Chili Peppers. The best way to keep up with your learning of the guitar is to play songs that you know and love, so invest in a really good tutorial book or DVD.

4. Shop around for the best deal

As with anything in life, you should allocate some time to looking for the best deal. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to come from your local guitar shop, but by all means visit the store and test out their instruments. If you are to find the best deal you should look online for high quality, yet reasonably priced guitar starter packs.

Find the right beginner guitar for you here.

Article Source: Beginners Guide to Choosing an Electric Guitar

When you first begin learning to play the guitar you truly want easy to learn guitar tunes or songs to start with. Otherwise it’s the equivalent of trying to comprehend German when you have only learned the fundamental words.

By starting with easy to master guitar tunes you’re setting yourself up for a much quicker learning curve and you will find that you will pick up learning the guitar significantly quicker and easier then without utilizing tunes or songs to base your guitar abilities on.

How you can discover easy to learn guitar tunes?

There have been many books written on easy to learn guitar tunes, usually the book is written from a guitar experts point of view so you know you’re obtaining great advice on how you can choose and learn guitar tunes/songs.

Can I Just Learn Any Guitar Tune?

Yes you can start at any guitar tune and attempt to discover it, but why would throw yourself in the deep end? You are much much better trying to learn an easy guitar tune then starting off on a much more advanced tune.

The entire purpose behind easy to learn guitar tunes is that they focus on the basics of learning guitar which ensures that not only are you having enjoyable learning your guitar tunes but you are also constructing your core guitar skills at the exact same time.

This will ultimately lead to you playing much much better guitar and having a better learning experience.

Also when trying to choose an simple to learn guitar tune it is generally best if you can listen to that tune also as reading the sheet music. This lets you attack the songs from each sides.

1. You’re learning the tune through sheet music so you are getting a feel for how you can read guitar sheet music.

2. You are creating your play by ear skills which will probably be very helpful for you personally later when you are trying to discover the much more advanced tunes.

So just remember, when you are searching for easy to learn guitar tunes don’t go for just any old tune, choose a good simple basic tune or riff to begin with and construct your self up from there.

In the event you practice learning tunes each day you will be shocked at how rapidly you choose it up.

Begin with easy to absorb guitar tunes.

For more information on A Simple Way To Understand Guitar Fast please visit Guitar Guide.

Article Source: A Simple Way To Understand Guitar Songs

If you desire to learn to play bass, then you have chosen a beautiful instrument to study. Some of you may holistically listen to music, and may not realize that the bass guitar is the deep tone you usually hear in the background.

It is used to provide fascinating undertones, and also are used to keep the beat, along with percussion. And it’s present in all classes of music, from rock to hip hop, as well as some international styles.

The bass guitar looks almost exactly like a regular guitar, but it is larger and has four strings. There are exceptions to this norm, but in general bass guitars come with strings that vibrate at the notes E, A, D, and G.

Now, if you do not know what those letters mean, don’t worry! You will learn them soon, once you start strumming the bass.

If you’re here, then obviously you are quite fascinated with the bass guitar and have loved with its sound. There are a sizable group of known artists who are known for their time on the bass because they mastered its resonating music.

You can too!

Bear in mind that if you desire to become decent with the bass, then you will need to practice. Studying an instrument in general demands a lot of commitment and dedication, and the bass guitar is no exception.

Getting lessons to learn to play bass guitar is very important both when you start and for further improvement once you can play.

If you cannot afford personal lessons, then you can buy CDs, DVDs, and a number of books, which introduce you to the bass. The method of learning that you take will also depend on whether you are someone who can be dedicated to individual study or if you need to have someone who can share his experience.

Because the bass requires practice, it is best to buy your own bass. If you still study in school, then you might have access to school-owned bass guitars, but this does not always give you the ability to play on your schedule.

Planning to budget practice time several times a week is extremely important if you want to learn to play the bass, since practicing is the key to mastering the bass guitar.

Lazarus is a musician who is currently trying to learn to play bass.

Article Source: ArticleRich.com

Although playing guitar fast is not every guitarist’s most significant goal, those who do want to improve their guitar speed desire this skill very much and are often frustrated with being unable to develop this part of their guitar playing.

If this describes you, I want to share with you several important insights about building guitar speed that will greatly help you to develop this skill.

Good news and bad news:

The good news is that virtually anyone can learn to play guitar fast. In addition, you can directly control the practicing process to make it more effective and achieve your guitar speed goals in a lot less time than it takes an average guitar player.

The bad news is that most guitar players (those who can’t yet play guitar fast) are totally on the wrong track in their approach to increasing guitar speed.

I see this all the time when working with new guitar students who come to me wanting to improve their guitar playing.

The typical path to increasing ones guitar speed is usually limited to starting to practice slowly with a metronome and gradually increasing speed in small increments.

Such a tactic can be effective early on in the process of learning new guitar exercises, but if you rely on it exclusively to develop your maximum guitar speed it will lead to plateaus and frustration.

Here are a few reasons why:

Great guitar players who can play guitar fast were able to successfully master all of the above mentioned elements of guitar speed whether they consciously realized it or not.  You need to do the same in order to increase your guitar speed to your maximum speed potential.

To help you expand and improve upon the conventional approach for building guitar speed, here are several guidelines to follow

Get specific about what problems you are having with trying to increase your guitar speed.

Simply saying “I can’t play guitar fast” is NOT specific enough. Being unable to play guitar fast is only a symptom of a more complex problem that usually has several causes. As you have seen above, the root of your guitar speed limitations can exist in any or all of the specific technical elements that make up the multidimensional skill of “playing guitar fast”.

Knowing exactly what is causing your problem is the first step to solving it.  When you learn exactly what is holding you back, you can focus your guitar practice sessions on the specific problems that needs to be overcome.

Having your guitar playing analyzed by an expert guitar teacher is the fastest way to get this required level of clarity.

Use a variety of practice strategies for increasing your guitar speed.

As your guitar playing skill level evolves, so will your specific guitar technique challenges. Therefore, the practice techniques you use at each stage of your guitar playing must evolve as well in order to be effective.

There is no such thing as ‘one’ ultimate guitar practice routine for increasing your guitar speed. Of course there are approaches to practicing guitar that are far more effective than others, but the way you organize your guitar speed training routines should be unique to your specific guitar technique and guitar speed challenges at any given time.

Practice integrating your guitar techniques together to avoid sounding like a guitar speed robot.

Over the years of teaching hundreds of guitar players to improve their guitar technique (as well as other musical skills), I have found that most guitarists spend very little time applying and integrating their musical skills and guitar techniques in particular.

This results in lack of musical freedom to express yourself completely and fully in any musical context.

When it comes to increasing your guitar speed, most guitarists typically focus on becoming faster with only one technique at a time.

For example, you may practice your sweep picking for 15 minutes, then move on to 15 minutes of legato, followed by 15 minutes of 2 hand tapping.

Although this approach will help you to improve at these techniques in isolation, you also need to specifically practice using all of these techniques ‘together’ in the same way that you will find these techniques used in real guitar solos.

Neglecting to do this will make your guitar playing sound unnatural and rather ‘robotic’ as you will struggle to play consistently well with using a variety of guitar techniques at once.

Although ‘guitar speed’ is clearly only one out of many musical areas that must be mastered in order to become a truly expressive and creative musician, it is a highly desired skill that most guitar players do not have.

You can see many examples of effective guitar speed building strategies that I use with my students by studying this free mini course on how to build guitar speed.

Applying the suggestions above during your guitar practice sessions and following the guidelines from this free guitar speed training mini course will help you greatly to build as much guitar speed as you desire for your specific guitar playing goals.

Article Source: ArticleSnatch.com

When you buy an electric guitar, you know that there are accessories that you can get that will make your playing easier or sound nicer. Just having the guitar itself is not enough.

Below we will discuss what some of the essentials are that you should purchase to go along with your electric guitar and why you might want to have these things.

The first thing to get is an electric tuner. You might have the skill to tune by ear which is great. No one should just rely on using a tuner and never learn how to tune without one.

The problem is that if you are playing at places there are times where it is so loud that you can’t tune by ear because you can’t hear the guitar. You have to have an electric tuner.

Get strap locks for your guitar. Strap locks are a way of attaching the strap to the guitar through a system that ensures that it will not fall. It will bolt onto the guitar through ball bearings holding it no matter how much it moves or how much weight is hanging from the guitar. This is a great way to protect your guitar from being damaged.

Get a practice amp with a headphone jack. Not all times you can play with your large amplifier. Having a headphone jack is even better because you can plug in headphones and practice while not disturbing others.

A multi effects peddle is something you might consider buying. This will let you play many different effects at the same time. The advantage of this is that you will sound nicer when you play and it can make playing your guitar more fun.

Buy a hard shell case for your guitar especially if you take it around with you a lot. This is needed because it will protect your guitar and hold much of your gear inside of it like a peddle, picks, your strap, and your tuner. It is nice to have everything all in one place that is protected.

Frank has been writing articles online for nearly 4 years now. He also publishes reviews of various consumer products. Come visit his latest websites that review Conversion Prophet 2 by James Yii & Peter Yoon and Auto Cash Funnel by Chris Freville & Paul Teague, and Christmas gifts for dad.

When learning the guitar you can be so busy trying to learn chords and songs that you may not even know if your guitar is in or out of tune. Being able to tune a guitar is very important when you begin learning.

There is no point in learning your favorite song if your guitar is out of tune, is there? The first step to know about tuning your guitar is what sound you are looking for from each string. We need to know which note each string will be tuned to:

1st – e (Bottom and thinnest string)

2nd – B

3rd – G

4th – D

5th – A

6th – E (Top and thickest string)
As you can see above, starting from the bottom, the 6th string is tuned to the note ‘E’, the 5th is ‘A’, 4th is ‘D’, 3rd is ‘G’, 2nd is ‘B’ and the 1st is ‘e’. Notice how I use a Capital ‘E’ and small ‘e’ for the 6th and 1st strings, this is to show the difference between the low E and high e string.

This has shown which notes should correspond with each string in ‘Standard Tuning’ (EADGBe).

At this stage, because you now know this information, you could easily use a pitch pipe or electric tuner which you can buy from any of your local music stores or online stores. However if you want to learn how you can tune your guitar without the use of a tuner then just read on…

If someone handed you a guitar and asked you to tune it, you would either have to have a really musical ear, or have one of the strings already in tune. For this lesson make sure your top string (E, 6th) is in tune, if you are unsure you could use a piano, a tuned guitar, or even a YouTube video to match the sound of that string.

If you start to practice listening to the sound of the top E string now, eventually you will be able to tune the guitar by ear. Using the help of the method below you will be able to tune your guitar on your own without the use of any equipment.

We are going to use a method called relative tuning. At this point you should have your low E string in tune. The reason we call it ‘relative tuning’ is because we are going to be tuning a string relative to the string above it, the first example is tuning the A(5th) string to the already tuned E(6th) string. I’ll show you what I mean:
e|—————–0—|

B|————-0—5—|

G|———0—4——-|

D|—–0—5———–|

A|-0—5—————|

E|-5——————-|

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

A. D. G. B. e

We already have our E string in tune, so now take the following steps:

1. The 5th fret of the Low E, is the same sound as the A string open, so play the E string with your finger on the 5th fret and the sound you hear is what the A string should sound like. All you have to do now is tune that open A until it matches the sound of the 5th fret on the top E string.

2. Same as above except you are using the 5th fret of the A string you just tuned to tune the D string. Turn the tuning peg of the open D string until you can match the sound of the A strings 5th fret.

3. Same as above except you are using the 5th fret of the newly tuned D string to tune the open G
4. This time there is a difference when tuning the B string relative to the tuned G string. Instead of using the 5th fret, like we have done previously, we use the 4th fret, this is the only one which is different. The method is still the same just make sure to use the 4th fret of the G when tuning the B.

5. Once you have tuned the B string you are now onto the last string (the high e). To tune the high e string using the B just use the exact same pattern as you did in steps 1, 2 and 3 above.

Another point to make is that the 6th and 1st strings are the same note (both E), so if one of them is in tune then it can be used to tune the other simply by playing them both at the same time and adjusting whichever is out of tune until they match up.

Like most things, the more you repeat this method, the better you will become at it. Once you manage to tune your guitar the first time, it gets easier, as most of the time it is quite close to the correct tuning already. The more you hear the sound of a tuned guitar the more your ear will be trained into knowing that sound.

Even if it’s just the top string you recognize, then you can use the relative tuning method to tackle the rest. Now you have your guitar tuned you can start learning all your favourite songs. Good Luck!

Christopher J Jones is a guitarist and teacher, with years of playing and teaching experience.

For more information on learning to play guitar Chris recommends this site, Learn-To-Play-Guitar-Review.com.

Article Source: How to Tune a Guitar – Helpful Guide on Tuning Your Guitar

In this article we will take a look at some of the differences between Humbucking pickups and Single Coil pickups, both technically and tonally. Many think, “Isn’t a Humbucker just two Single Coils side by side?” The answer is actually yes and no as they both provide quite distinct tonal and technical characteristics.

There have been lots of attempts to utilize both tones in one instrument or pickup, but the over all opinion is that a guitar is either use one or the other. Like they say, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

To begin, let’s talk a bit about how a pickup works. A guitar pickup is more or less a magnet that puts out a magnetic field directly above the pickup. The magnet picks up the vibrations of the strings and sends the signal to your amp to be amplified.

The majority of pickups in electric guitars are passive meaning that they do not have any kind of pre-amp and it is the amp’s job to boost the signal.

On the other hand, an active pickup uses weaker magnets than passive pickups but has a pre-amp to boost the signal output to a reasonable level. Active pickups are usually in acoustic guitars but can be seen in a few electric guitars too.

Single Coils were the earliest pickups. The initial single coil guitar pickups were released in the late 1920′s. A single coil pickup, as the name implies, is composed up of a single coil of wire spun in one direction (either clockwise or counter clockwise) around the pole pieces. The pole pieces are the circular metal pieces under each string.

One of the problems in the first single coil pickups was that they picked up a lot of electromagnetic interference from other electric machinery or radio waves, which caused a buzz or hum.

Humbuckers were invented to eliminate the electromagnetic interference. They use two coils, which are wound in opposing directions to give each coil conflicting polarity. This would stop the electromagnetic interference and help stop the hum, thus creating a “hum-bucking” pickup.

Humbuckers did not start showing up in guitars until the mid 1950′s. When it comes to tonal variations, it gets a little more difficult to explain and really comes down to personal opinions and preferences.

Lots of people believe humbuckers are for distortion and overdrive, and single coils are for clean patches. This isn’t necessarily the case because many guitarists use single coils for high gain distortion and others use humbuckers exclusively for clean tone.

Humbuckers tend to have a greater output because they utilize two coils which does make them simpler to distort. However, several jazz box guitars have humbuckers and are nearly always used for a clean patch. They make a thicker and darker clean tone than single coils do.

The clean from single coils is a more sparkly high type clean that is often associated with country or “Eric Clapton Style” blues. They also are not as quick to overdrive as humbuckers. When single coils are played through a smooth tube overdrive, you can still hear the clean shining through where it gets lost with a humbucker.

Typical guitars that have humbuckers are the Gibson Les Paul, Gibson SG, most PRS models, most Ibanez guitars, and nearly all hollow body Guild’s and Gretch’s. The most usual single coil guitars are the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster.

Since their introduction, each sort of pickup has become more versatile. Some humbuckers have the alternative of coil splitting or tapping.

This is the capacity to effectively shut off one of the coils in the pickup which can give a fairly nice interpretation of a single coil pickup.

Single coils have gotten a great deal better about electromagnetic interference and there are quite a few “noiseless” single coil pickups available.

However, this does not solve the single coil vs. humbucker conundrum because you only get a solid emulation.

Fender guitars have tried to solve the question by producing the “Fat Strat,” which makes use of a humbucking pickup at the bridge position and two single coil pickups in the common Stratocaster position.

It does thicken the tone when using the humbucker, nevertheless there isn’t the option running two humbuckers at once as you can in a Gibson Les Paul or SG for a really saturated overdrive. The guitar also loses some of the capability to make the very twangy bridge tone you can achieve with the single coil pickup.

Single coils and humbuckers are completely different animals, and if you want both sounds, you need two guitars. If you need to choose one guitar, the best way to go about it is to go play several different guitars with different pickups through different amps and choose the one you like best.

If you are looking for guitar reviews of the fender stratocaster, be sure and check out GuitarReviewer.com

Article Source: ArticleRich.com

Would you like to make your music vibrate with the pulse of life? In order to move the soul, music must reflect life itself, celebrating life’s joys and mourning life’s sorrows.

Vibrato, a method of slightly varying the pitch of your guitar, brings your music to life by employing specialized left-hand techniques to cause a string or strings to vibrate at a varied pitch.

There are two main kinds of vibrato on the guitar. The standard (also called longitudinal) type, also used by violinists and other string players, utilizes the friction created by the musician’s fingertip as it moves. This causes the string move back and forth along its length.

This motion makes the string alternatively shorter and longer, causing the pitch to waver above and below the note being vibrated.

The pull-release vibrato, on the other hand, produces its distinctive sound by first pulling the string toward the palm of the hand with one of the fingers, keeping that finger lightly on the string, then returning it to its normal position. In pull-release, the pitch also fluctuates, but only above the note that vibrates.

The vibrato can yield a delightful effect on the guitar’s sound, depending on the particular piece of music. The finest players use vibratos selectively. Never would you use it on every note. Otherwise, vibrato would lose its ornamental effect. It heightens the intensity of certain notes, giving them a vigorous singing quality.

Guitarists utilize vibrato to intensify the climactic note of a phrase or, as an alternative, to emphasize the melody notes while playing a melody and accompaniment piece. Guitarists also use vibrato to help sustain notes.

Vibrato opens up an extensive and expressive range of sound available for a guitarist to utilize. It truly makes a guitar express the full range of human emotion.

In the vibrato, the variety that constitutes that full range comes from two essential components: the fluctuation of the pitch and the speed of the vibration. The guitarist should be aware of the magnitude to which the pitch fluctuates, because the effects change according to the amount of fluctuation.

Employ only minor divergences from the main pitch; otherwise, the effect will be overdone. One could say, with respect to vibrato, that a little goes a long way! Normally, the tone should not deviate much more than a quarter-tone on either side of the main pitch.

The speed of the vibrato should vary with respect to the speed and the emotional character of the music you are playing. The speed should also match the register. Generally, the quicker or more intense the music, the faster the vibrato.

Furthermore, the upper register of the guitar’s range also calls for a faster vibrato, due to the greater intensity of the higher pitches. The speed of the vibrato usually falls within a narrow range of four to ten cycles per second. Pay attention in order to avoid extremes.

The vibrato must sound natural, flowing from the music’s own character. A vibrato that is too slow for the musical passage being played is unwieldy, awkward-sounding, as is one that is too fast. An extremely slow vibrato may be fine for special effects, but not for most of the standard repertoire.

If your vibrato sounds too fast for the passage, then your playing sounds nerve-wracking, rather than intense, as you intended. A truly artistic vibrato should have a measured rhythm, never descending into random chaos. It should, rather, reflect the humanity of both the player and of the music itself.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com

About the Author: Among their many other course offerings, Los Angeles Guitar Academy Online has a new series of free online guitar lessons, designed to introduce a wide variety of people to the classical guitar. LAGA Online has more free lessons and articles on their teaching blog.

It is a curious paradox of the music industry: guitarists, particularly rock guitarists, are often thought of as trendsetters when it comes to fashion and culture; but when it comes to their instruments, they are notoriously conservative.

Innovations such as active electronics, guitar synthesizers and Steinberger’s intrepid steps into the field of headless instruments in the 80′s have failed to make much of a dent in the market. Gibson and Fender continue to dominate the electric guitar market much as they did in the 1950′s and 60′s.

Even with the entry of new competitors into the market over the years such as Ibanez, Paul Reed Smith and Charvel/Jackson, the electric guitar has remained essentially unchanged with one to three magnetic pickups and a mess of wires connecting them to the controls. But things may be about to change!

In the last couple of years a few innovations have come along that have totally turned conventional wisdom – or at least conventional guitar electronics on its head. The first is the nylon string solid body electric guitar.

I first saw one of these in the hands of metal ace Yngwie Malmsteen and was blown away by the sound. For any artist who is trying to incorporate elements of classical guitar in his or her repertoire, this instrument provides the mellow classical tone of a nylon stringed guitar with the comfortable feel and action of a traditional solid body axe.

This has been made possible through the tremendous advances made in recent years in the field of Piezo pickup technology.

Without going into too much technical detail, the Piezo differs from a traditional magnetic pickup in that the Piezo element vibrates with the string, sending an electrical signal of that vibration to a preamp within the guitar for processing, rather than capturing an electromagnetic representation of that vibration which can then be sent directly to an amplifier, or to an onboard preamp if further shaping of the signal is desired.

The Piezo eliminates the need for steel strings, which would otherwise interact with the magnetic pickup, and also produces more satisfactory results for players with a lighter fingerstyle technique.

Lest you think this is just another passing fancy, Parker has produced a nylon string version of their famous “Fly” model and another up-and-comer, Sadowski Guitars, is producing a Telecaster style model employing the same technology.

Another intriguing development is in the area of computer-guitar interface. This has been long time coming, and if you consider the explosion in the popularity of digital recording with Pro Tools and similar software, it’s surprising it took as long as it did. Far and away, the leader in this field is Line 6′s Variax model.

Now, I will be the first person to admit that I know just enough about computer technology to be dangerous, but I’ll try to tell you what I know from what I’ve read and from friends and acquaintances who have played the Variax. I should also state that I am in no way affiliated with Line 6 or any of their subsidiaries or partners.

The Variax is, according to the Line 6 brochure a “digital modeling” guitar that allows the musician to switch between a huge array of potential sounds on one instrument.

The sounds of a 12-string acoustic, Fender Stratocaster style single coils, Les Paul humbuckers, banjo, chimes and dozens of others are all available at the flick of a switch. The best part about it is that all of these tonal variations are available completely hum free.

For the working musician, this means not having to lug around five to seven separate guitars to provide him with the all of the sounds he requires.

The true test, however, is hearing one of these fine instruments in action, so if you’d like to check one out, a list of authorized dealers is available from the Line 6 website.

At an MSRP of around $1000 for the mid-line Variax 600 – it’s also available in the 300 and 700 – it’s not cheap, but for the professional or amateur with money to burn, it may be a worthwhile investment.

There is so much more to be developed in the near future with the improvements in computer technology and miniaturization. Whole racks of effects can now be had in a box the size of a cigarette packet.

This is certainly a boon for the musician in terms of both price and the effort necessary to move the equipment.

I foresee a day when an entire guitarist rig, with the exception of the instrument itself will be contained within the body of the guitar itself.

And while that may not be a comfort to the guitarist who finds himself at home amongst his racks of effects processors, time waits for no man, and he will eventually find himself at a crossroads in musical instrument development, much as those men did back in 1930′s and 40′s when the acoustic guitar was forced to make way for the first electric guitars.

Author Bio: Kenny Auyoung is the webmaster at GetMeABand.com – Online musician search network with thousands of musician & band profiles. Find musicians, start a band, and play music.

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com – Free Website Content

The blues has influenced almost every genre of music. All the great guitar players of our time have been influenced to some degree by the blues. The music theory involved in playing the blues is rather simple, but the feeling that can be applied to playing the blues is what makes it so popular.

The 12 bar blues progression:

If you want to learn how to play blues, you need to know the 12 bar blues progression. Just as its’ name implies, it is made up of 12 bars (measures) of music. the 12 bars just keep repeating. The most common chord progression would be the I, IV, and V chords of the key that you want to play in.

The progression looks like this:

I / I / I / I / IV / IV / I / I / V / IV / I / I

So if you wanted to play in the key of E, the progression would be:

E / E / E / E / A / A / E / E / B7 / A / E / E

This is the basic 12 bar blues progression, but there are variations that can be used. One common variation would be to substitute the last chord with the V chord. So in the example above the last E chord would be replaced with a B7.

This is what the progression would look like in the keys of A and D:

Key of A: A / A / A / A / D / D / A / A / E / D / A / A

Key of D: D / D / D / D / G / G / D / D / A / G / D / D

The simplicity of this progression and the fact that it just keeps repeating itself is what makes the blues popular with musicians. As long as everyone is in the same key, you are able to jam together without actually knowing a specific song.

What really makes the blues though is the feeling that is put into the playing. This is another reason the blues are so enjoyable to play. You can really put your soul into it. Practice the 12 bar progression in different keys and using different rhythms.

Just use your own feeling and you will be surprised with what you come up with.

The Blues Scale:

Knowing the blues scale is the other half to playing the blues.

The blues scale is really the pentatonic scale with the flatted 3rd note added.

Pentatonic scale

-X–|—-|—-|-X–

-X–|—-|—-|-X–

-X–|—-|-X–|—-

-X–|—-|-X–|—-

-X–|—-|-X–|—-

-X–|—-|—-|-X–

Blues Scale

-X–|—-|—-|-X–

-X–|—-|—-|-X–

-X–|—-|-X–|-O–

-X–|—-|-X–|—-

-X–|-O–|-X–|—-

-X–|—-|—-|-X–

The first diagram shows one of the patterns for the pentatonic guitar scale. The second diagram shows the flatted 3rd added, indicated by the O’s. These added notes are also sometimes referred to as the blue notes.

Practice this scale forward and backward. Try using some bends and slides. Remember, the key to playing the blues is the feeling you put into it.

Ed Haas is a guitar player of thirty years and is the webmaster of learnitguitar.com.  Visit his website for more information on how to play the blues – Article Source: ArticleRich.com