Blues Soloing Basics: Learn to Improvise on the 12-Bar Minor Pentatonic Scale
Understanding these few simple ideas will help make your blues playing more satisfying and musical.
David Hamburger
David Hamburger is a composer, guitarist, and instructor based in Austin, Texas. He is the author of our best-selling Acoustic Guitar Method.
Acoustic Guitar Basics: A Gentle Introduction to Barre Chords
In this lesson you’ll learn a handful of essential barre chord shapes and use them to play the swing favorite “After You’ve Gone.”
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12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 12: Improvising on the 12-bar Form
Learn how to use the form of the 12-bar blues as a roadmap for your improvising and give your blues solo a sense of logic and musical development.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 11: Developing Satisfying Solos
Learn to create a solo that has a certain kind of connectedness and unity, because it’s based around some related ideas instead of just whatever lick you happen to come up with at the moment.
Guitar Lesson: Add Some Swing to Your Fingerstyle Blues with Walking Bass Lines
In this guitar lesson you will learn to play a 12-bar walking-bass blues in the key of E major, adding some swing to your blues playing.
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12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 10: Creating Contrast
Space can be good, but if you want to create a bigger sense of dimension, adding in chords as responses to single-note licks can give you a new depth and texture, while creating an additional level of call-and-response.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 9: Playing Into the Downbeat
Look at how to play into the downbeat to create momentum in your fingerstyle blues soloing and explore different kinds of resolutions—short, long, and delayed.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 8: Adding Motion and Color With Jazz Chords
Explore how you can add motion and color to your blues playing by using compact chord voicings inspired by the great jazz guitarist Freddie Green.
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12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 7: Building Call-and-Response Patterns with Western Swing Chords
Create call-and-response statements using Western swing chords. You’ll learn to play single-note licks on the I chord in the key of A major, answered by different combinations of sixth and ninth chords.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 6: Harmonizing a Scale
Learn how to create interesting harmonies derived from a scale—specifically, the ascending form of A melodic minor (A B C D E F# G#).
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 5: Playing Chords up the Neck
Explore a bunch of different ways of playing E7 and A7 chords up the neck and ways of combining these ideas with single-note licks for a cohesive statement.
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12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 4: Accenting the Backbeats
Learn how to improve your blues playing by accenting the offbeats and keeping rock-steady bass notes, all on a one-chord groove.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 3: Accenting the Offbeats
Work on some country-blues patterns and see how emphasizing the backbeat—or beats 2 and 4—improves your blues playing.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar — Lesson 2: Creating Rhythmic Contrast
Learn how to use rhythmic contrast in playing blues—mixing up quarter notes, eighth notes, and eighth-note triplets.
12 Ways to Play Better Blues Guitar – Lesson 1: Syncopation
Explore syncopation—playing around with a melody’s rhythmic placement over the bass notes to make the music sound cooler.
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What is Travis Picking?
Travis picking is an accompaniment style you'll learn in this basics lesson excerpted from the Acoustic Guitar Fingerstyle Method.
Easy Fingerpicking Lesson: How to Play “House of the Rising Sun”
"House of the Rising Sun" is surprisingly easy and fun to play on guitar. Learn a basic picking pattern and get rocking!
Play an Easy Version of the Traditional Song “Darling Corey”
Here is a simple version of "Darling Corey" using two chords, A and G, that will give you plenty of practice switching between those two chords.
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Learn to Easily Switch Between Acoustic Guitar Chords by Pivoting on an Anchor Finger
When switching between some chords, like A and D, you are able to pivot around the index finger, holding it down while you move your other fingers around it.
Country Backup Basics
So here it is, our first bass/strum move. It’s not so different from doing four straight downstroke strums, except that the first strum is replaced with a single note, the root of the chord.
Seventh Chords
The G7 chord, as you might guess, is closely related to G...
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How to Combine Fretted Notes with Slide Notes
Learn how to employ this classic blues technique with this excerpt from Acoustic Guitar Slide Basics
PRIVATE LESSON: How to Play Bluesy, Single-Note Licks on Acoustic Guitar
Thumping out a steady bass drone with your thumb lets you spin bluesy, single-note licks over the top with your fingers as an improvised alternative to the folkier-sounding alternating-bass style.
Learn to Play the Classic Jazz Tune “After You’ve Gone”
My initial exposure to this tune was through the version by Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France.
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Republic of Texas Offers Affordable Resonators Steeped in Tradition
Republic Guitars has caught the attention of the late Texas blues legend Johnny Winter, as well as members of the Eagles and the Doobie Brothers.