Quite often, when I’m teaching a beginner or intermediate student and bends come up in lessons for the first time, I find that many students have instincts on how to do a bend that are pretty far off from what they should be. They’ll go in for their first attempt at a bend, and land...
This is the 8th part in my “Breaking Down the Blues” series. You can see a rundown of all the parts in this series here. It’s also a follow up on my previous post, where I went through some of the theory behind the Dorian Mode, and went over some concepts that I like to...
This is the 7th installment in my ‘Breaking Down the Blues’ series of posts. You can find the other posts here. If you’ve arrived at a point in your journey in learning to play blues on the guitar where you’re comfortable with the minor and major pentatonic scales, as well as the blues scale, and...
This is the sixth part in my Breaking Down the Blues series. It’s a follow up to my last post, Breaking Down the Blues, pt 5: The Major Pentatonic Scale. I’ll be referencing that article a lot, as well as ideas from part 1. In this post, I’m going to demonstrate a blues solo that...
This is the fifth part in my series on the system behind playing the blues on the guitar. In this part, I’ll talk about the role that the major pentatonic and major blues scales play when soloing over a blues progression. The other parts in the Breaking Down the Blues series are: Part 1: The...
This is the fourth part in my ‘Breaking Down the Blues’ series. In the previous parts, I covered the 12 bar blues progression, the extended box pattern of the blues scale, and I demonstrated some blues licks. Here are links to the previous parts: The Blues Progression The Blues Scale 5 Tasty Blues Licks In...
If you’re a jazz guitarist, a must know skill is how to create a walking bass line and chord accompaniment. This is very useful in any situation where you’re not playing with a bass player, whether it be accompanying a singer, horn player, or another guitarist. In this article, I’ll go through the method on...
This is the third part in my ‘Breaking Down the Blues’ series. In part one, I went through the blues progression, common variations of it, and how to put it together in any key you want. Part two covered the blues scale, it’s most common patterns on the neck of the guitar, and how to...
This is the second part in a series about the basic components of playing blues on the guitar. The first part focused on the blues chord progression, how to figure it out in different keys, and common variations of it. In this part I’ll talk about the blues scale, which is used to solo over...
This is the first part in a series where I will go through the basic aspects of playing blues on the guitar. It’s a good idea to have some idea of how playing the blues works as a guitarist. Pretty much all contemporary, popular styles of music have evolved from the blues. Learning the structure...