Playing the Blues

For the last couple of months. I've been playing alot. I've gotten good at metal and punk. But now it's so boreing, same thing over and over. So I was going though this site, and I was checking out the easy tricks on here. And I fell in love that bluesy sound they had. So now all Ive been playing is blues riffs. I was going to get a ESP, LTD F-200 (A bad ass guitar.) Now Im thinking of getting a strat, mixed with my 72' Champ. It would rock. Now I wanna play the blues.. I had a good punk, metal sound going. Now Im gonna go for a bluesy, hard rock sound. Im as bad as woman always changing my mind.. j/k LOL Just thought I would share my mental break though...

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Is it just me or does life suck? Maybe I suck and it just life? We shall never know...

Speaking of playin the blues, I'm somewhat of a beginner, and I've just started looking at blues. I've tried some basic progression,but i just don't seem to "get it." For instance I tried looking up a song, and all it said was 12-bar blues progression in E. Now to be totally honest, I don't know how to play even that. If there is some help out there for me, whether it be a website or just a person, I'd be very thankful.

Let me start by saying, "Halleluelia! Praise the Lord, another converted!". Congratulations on your conversion OldSkoolPunk02, I think you'll find the blues and hard rock to be an amazing combination of melody, rhythm, energy and feeling.

Tdogg, the 12 bar blues isn't tough, don't get stressed about it. It took me a bit to get it down too. But here it is. 12 bar blues is simply a chord progression that goes
I I I I IV IV I I V V I. err... something like that. Come to think of it I'm not sure I wrote that write. But you probably know the sound already, just having trouble recognizing the chords used. It's the I (root) IV (fourth) and V (fifth) of a scale. So in E it would be E, A, and B. E for four beats, A for two, E for two, then B for four (although there are many many variations of what you can do in the last four beats). I think I explained that right. For me, I can just hear the progression, and if I knwo the chords then the rest comes easily. You'll get that way too after hearing lots of blues.

Im mean most the music I listen to is Old Rock 60's 70's stuff. But Im into Metal, Punk, Reggea?, Rap, Techno. All kinds of music. It just starting to seem like Metal and punk, are just so repative.. I like listening to it, but I wanna be a better musician.(No dissrespect to all the metal players, I just want to diversify my playing) I don't want to play just metal..

Yo Tdoggg99!
Dont worry! if you will practise it will come easily! if you want a good song to listen what you are supposed to do - listen to "you shook me" / led zeppelin
Now about the chords progression...
basicly in the E scale you play
E A E E A A E E B A E B
you can convert it to any scale though E seems to be most comfortable
A very helpful thing you can do is to record yourself while playing the rythm and then to playback it and to improvise over the scale
(i'm talking about pentatonic scale all the time) Basicly dont try to stick with these chords , try to be imaginative (this word is exist right ?)
if you want some nice rythm guitar riffs for the start you can drop me an e-mail
zeppeli@netvision.net.il

Much Thanx James and Zepplen... Its good to know that there is help out there for people like me.

A basic 12 bar blues goes like this (in the key of E). Also, each chord is for one bar.
E E A A, E E E E, B B A A, (end with E.) Note that there's three groups of four chords (making 12). Blues songs will almost always follow this basic outline.

If you want to do it in another key, replace each chord with the corresponding chord of the new key. (if you want the Key of G, replace E with G, A with C and B with D. The E is the I chord, the A is the IV, and the B is the V in the key of E)

Also, another note on blues is the chords are dominant 7ths. The 7ths give them the more bluesy feel. Umm, hmm what else... usually the ryhthm is shuffle or boogie. it's good to learn blues because it puts passion into your playing that will come out in interesting ways. Take care.

Atomic

Just in case you feel the blues progressions already posted are getting repetitive (it will only seem like it), try these out.

E---E---G-A-E---E---G-A-E (key=E)
the changes to G A and back to E are quick.
And then a variation of that can be:
E---E---A-G-E---E---G-A-E

And then progress to this:
E---E---A-G-E---E---G-G#-A
A---A---D-C-A---A---C-D-E
E---E---A-G-E---E---G-A-B
B---B---B-A#-A STOP (throw in a turnaround riff and start all over again).
((Sorry had to edit the above))
-or-
E--B--A--A--E--B--E-A-E-B

Try out the other keys also. Just follow the I-IV-V formula as James and Atomic posted.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the blues. Yet another light goes on out there in musicland.

[This message has been edited by John O'Carroll (edited 09-08-2000).]

Just like atomic said it's nice to add 7's chords... but when doing it i think you better use the mixolydian mode because in this mode the 7 note of the major scale is pulled down by 1/2 step, and in X7 chords
the note that added is also 1/2 lower than the 7 note in the scale...
i hope you understood me
P.S in minor it's nice to play with 5's chords