So You Want To Play The Blues. First Of All, You Need To Choose Which Style You Prefer

There can't be many guitar players who watch a blues man play a tear jerking riff on the guitar and not ache to make the same sound. There's something really cool attached to it that transcends the physical technique. It needn't be super complex or showy - Lightnin' Hopkins would often play an easy bass line that could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. One of the first things we need to do is figure out what genre of blues guitar we'd would like to play. This is crucial - you have a lot of practice ahead of you, so you need to be enthusiastic about your chosen style.

If you say ' blues guitar ', various ideas will occur to different people, according to on their age and character. For many, the electric blues of Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton is the goal. Other people are looking for the true authenticity of the classic acoustic blues guitar. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll group all the electric styles into one category and simply name it ' electric ' , because 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 should we identify? This could be done by technique, sound or location. In truth, where the guitarists where located seems to have had a big impact on the regional styles, probably because guitar players exchanged ideas from each other. In this way, regional musical styles developed.

Blues Guitar From The Delta

It's imagined that this is the place where the blues began, though it's more likely that it began in several areas at about the same time. It's well known that quite a few mississippi blues men travelled North to ply their trade in cities such as Chicago or Detroit when it dawned on them that they could get paid playing blues guitar without laboring fifteen hours every in the fields.

The early acoustic songs of Muddy Waters (Walkin' Blues) is testimony to this basic mississippi technique Incidentally, Muddy said that he was singing his version of Walkin' before Robert Johnson.

Delta blues guitar could be described as relatively simple, often raw and deeply emotional. The bottleneck style of picking guitar was perfect for the delta. The conditions were usually hot with high humidity, which played havoc with the tuning of a wooden guitar. Bottleneck tunes played in open tuning were easier to keep in tune, and it was also easy to compensate for tuning errors by adjusting the slide movement.

Songs from mississippi delta played in standard tuning were more often in the Keys of A and E, and used a monotonic bass pattern. The picking technique might be often simple but powerful. Artists to research are Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell.

And Now To Texas

The oil state has always produced a continuous stream of blues men. Back in the early days, some notable blues men originating from Texas formed a distinctive sound. A legendary figure, Lightnin' Hopkins, played mostly in E and A, employing a monotic bass line. However, his right hand thumb was very quick and he was more inventive than the delta style. Hopkins wrote many slow temp blues songs in E, but could quicky raise the tempo for folks that liked to dance a while. In his hay day, he could easily fill the local halls and recorded often. However, when he was ripped off by a recording studio, he forever after insisted on being paid before every gig. Listen to the music of Mance Lipscomb, another Texas legend.

Carolina Men

It's strange how certain regions had a large number of impressive blues men, and this was the case in South Carolina. A lot of the music appears to be a link from Texas blues and complicated ragtime styles, but this description is a bit too simplistic. Several like Willie Walker and Pink Anderson were confident in playing the true alternating bass line we associate with ragtime blues, but others, like Floyd Council, could leave the pattern whenever needed to accent some musical phrases in his music. It's clear that these guitarists exchanged ideas, as we can identify similar patterns in the work of Blind Boy Fuller, Floyd and Gary Davis. All of these guitarists were known to one another. Scrapper Blackwell penned some great examples of amazing songs with clever structure and attractive lyrics.

Ragtime Blues Guitar

Possibly the most complex blues style of all, the best exponents are real masters of this way of playing. Ragtime guitar patterns generally have chord structures in the keys of G and C, and often feature six or seven chord changes rather than the three or four associated with delta type blues songs in E or A. (There are always the exceptions to the rule!) Other features are a strong 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 alternating finger and thumb. Possibly the two grand legends of ragtime blues were Blind Blake and Reverend Gary Davis. Blind Blake's bass work was particulary slick, often doubling up on the beat and rolling his thumb from one bass string to the next, creating a highly syncopated sound. Gary Davis could really play all styles - blues, gospel and ragtime blues.

Some guitarists, such as Big Bill Broonzy, employed a monotic bass picking pattern, but was much more creative than most Mississippi blues men. He might play Tin Pan Alley standards, ballads, and often cross over towards jazz and ragtime in his approach. Broonzy developed a style we might call Chicago swing.