Category: Free Inquiry

The Blues

This week, we’re going to dive into the blues! Below, you’ll find some basic chords for 12-bar Blues in E7 and some recommended listening.

When you are playing the rhythm of the blues, try to imagine you are on a train. This train is chugging along at a steady pace, not too fast, not too slow. Now as we move along, you have to FEEL the Ca-Chunk, ca-Chunk, ca-Chunk of the engine rolling along.

Songs to listen to before playing the blues:

• Red House by Jimi Hendrix
• Green Onions by Booker T. & the M.G.’s
• I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man by Muddy Waters (or literally anything by him he is spectacular)
• Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters
• Born Under A Bad Sign by Albert King
• Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker
• Down to the crossroads

12-bar E7 Blues

Now, for E7 blues, we need only three chords to start grooving. We start with Four bars of E7, followed by 2 bars of a new chord called A7. It is the same as an A chord, except you drop the middle finger. We go back to an E7 chord for two bars, then one bar of the B7 chord, which is a new one for us (example below). The B7 is followed by a bar of A7, then the song finishes with two bars of E7 coming to a total of… 12 bars. Below is a video of me playing the 12 bar blues.

E7 x4, A7 x2, E7 x2, B7 x1, A7 x1, E7 x2

Here is a video of me playing the 12 bar blues in D.

Here a some pumpkins I carved last weekend with my girlfriend.

This week, I have some more recorded songs that I like playing. These ones are songs that I learned several months ago but haven’t played in a long time.

This is “Brazil” by Declan McKenna. I may post a video with lyrics in a future post, but this is a good starting place for learning.

This is “Say it ain’t so” by Weezer.

I also printed a flexi-cat for my girlfriend, not that it’s relevant to learning music but it’s just super cool. In the future, I might print some guitar-related supplies such as a pick or a slide. I will include links to whatever I think is relevant/useful.

Here is a link so that you can print your own Flexi-Cat.

For this week’s blog post, I have a few video clips of me playing some songs I learned I know.

This song is called “bite my tongue” by Wilt. This is raw footage from my iPhone 12 mini, and hopefully, we can start to look into getting better audio. Keep in mind that I learned this song only three days ago so some touch-ups need to be made.

Here is the real version by Wilt

This is a video of me playing the intro to Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven.

Please comment songs for me to try and learn, and, if possible, I will try to learn them.

This week’s song to learn is Country Roads by John Denver. It is a simple campfire song that uses four simple chords: G, Em, D, and C. Here is the song line by line with the chords overlayed.

When playing, use a down down / up down up country strumming pattern. The slash indicates an 8th-note rest. You can also only hit the first string on the first strum down of each bar to give it that twangy feel.

Here is a video of someone playing this song a lot better than I can, just for a little inspiration.

Chords and Tuning

Here are some of the starter chords you will need. Below is a simple method for learning guitar chords called tabs. The tabs below are a basic starter pack that will allow you to play quite a few beginner to intermediate songs. With tabs, the six horizontal lines are the guitar strings, while the horizontal lines represent the frets. These tabs are all snapshots of the first four frets of the guitar.

Let’s look closer at the E chord to learn a bit more. For the E chord, we can see the three large circles with numbers next to them. These represent where your fingers will go. “1” corresponds to your index finger, “2” for your middle finger, etc.

Before we do any rocking out, we have to make sure we are in tune. If the guitar you are using is even the littlest bit out of tune, nothing will sound right. You can buy a physical tuner that attaches to your guitar, which generally will be more accurate but more expensive. For a cheaper option, you can download tuner apps such as “Guitar Tuna” free of charge or sign up. The quickest but least accurate option for those who are less experienced would be an online tuner that plays a note, then you tune by ear to said note. Fenders Website offers a decent for guitar, as well as for Electric guitar, Bass, and Ukulele. For an experienced player, this may even be preferred to a budget tuner, but it can be a little challenging for those just starting.

Learning the Guitar

I love making music. Since the day I was born, I’ve been good at making lots of noise. I grew up with choir practice every Monday, which evolved to band practice both in school and outside of school. It was only about three years ago that I picked up a guitar with a real intention of playing it. I saw a friend play “Blackbird” one summer night and decided this was something I needed to be able to do. I learned the song that night and have been playing ever since.

The goal of this blog is simple. I want to inspire as many people as possible to play the guitar while also providing them with a starter pack of songs to play. By posting weekly songs for inspiration, in combination with some basic guitar knowledge/history, I hope to help people fall in love with making music and give them the skills to do it. This project is something I wish I would have had to help me on my guitar learning journey. I will also benefit from the creation of this blog, as I am well aware of my lacking music theory/history knowledge which are things I would like to add to my posts.

Now, for those of you interested in learning, you will need…

1. A Guitar 2. A pick 3. A good attitude

]

Please leave a comment if you would like to learn more about the guitar or have any song recommendations/requests.