FIGURE 2-2: The 6-note blues scale and 5-note minor pentatonic scale.
The expression that invokes your senses
One of the best things about the blues — and a huge relief to beginning guitarists — is that the blues isn’t all that hard to play, technically speaking. Playing lead or rhythm in most blues songs requires only intermediate technique. What is harder to do — in fact, you never stop figuring out how to do it better — is to play expressively. Expression in the blues is what turns craft into art. Check out these ways to make your music more bluesy:
Use bent notes. Bent notes are notes where the pitch is raised slowly upwards in a continuous fashion, and this element is closely identified with the blues.
Make your music shake. Vibrato is a technique that makes the notes of the music quiver by using left-hand finger wiggling, which gives blues a signature sound. B.B. King is well known for his expressive and soulful vibrato. Because much of the blues is set to medium tempos, players hold notes for long periods of time. Vibrato is a great way to bring notes to life, so they don’t just sit there.
Give it some slide. If you don’t hit notes straight on and rather slide into notes from above and below, you give music a bluesy feel and breathe some life into your notes. Guitarists often draw their inspiration from vocalists and horn players (saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and so on), who exercise the slide technique on a regular basis.
Slur your notes. Connecting notes through slurs — where you don’t restrike the second note with the right hand — is a good way to loosen up your playing in the typical way a blues player does.
Allow the rhythm to flow. Blues also allows a certain rhythmic liberty to be taken with melodies and especially letting the melody notes deliberately fall after, or behind, the beat. Backphrasing is actually more of a rhythmic alteration, or rubato, but it’s generally thought of as a phrasing technique. It’s been described as lazy, devil may care, or cavalier, but it sure makes the notes sound more bluesy.
The groove that sets the pace
Groove is often used informally to mean “on the mark” or “in sync with,” but the term refers to the meter, rhythmic feel, tempo, and the instruments’ role in providing the accompaniment, or backing figures. Several different grooves exist within the blues:
A shuffle is a type of groove that uses triplet eighth notes with the emphasis on sounding just the first and third notes played at a medium tempo. “Sweet Home Chicago” is an example of a song in a shuffle groove.
A slow 12/8 blues (the “12/8” refers to the time signature) is another type of groove that’s also based on three-note groups, but the tempo is slower and all three notes of the beat are pronounced. “Stormy Monday” is a song in a slow 12/8 feel.
A straight-four groove is where the eighth notes are evenly spaced apart, rather than in the long-short scheme of a shuffle. “Johnny B. Goode” is in a straight four.
Jump is another groove that is an uptempo shuffle, but it requires a slightly different approach in phrasing and rhythm.
Given the infinite forms of expression the blues takes, it’s nice to know that at least from a technical standpoint, only a few grooves need to be mastered to play most of the blues music out there.
Dissecting an Acoustic and an Electric
Anatomically speaking, guitars come in two sexes: acoustic and electric. Since solidbody electric guitars do not make sound acoustically, but through electronics, they have more chromosomes — er, components — than do acoustics. Some of the functions of these gizmos aren’t even obvious until you plug in and start messing around with them. So electric guitars may seem more complicated at first, but really, you learn very quickly what all the stuff does, and it’s more about technique than anything else.
It’s true, though, that about the only thing that can go wrong with an acoustic is that a string breaks. On an electric, there are more moving and electronic parts that are subject to failure, so you have a little more to keep track of on an electric. And all guitars, being made of wood and moving parts, can go out of whack and need periodic adjustment to keep them humming and happy.
But both types follow the same basic approach to neck function and string tension. That’s why acoustic and electric guitars have very similar constructions, despite a sometimes radical difference in tone production. Figures 2-3 and 2-4 show the various parts of an electric guitar and an acoustic guitar.
FIGURE 2-3: A typical acoustic guitar with its major parts labeled.
The following list tells you the functions of the primary parts of a guitar:
Back (acoustic only): The part of the body that holds the sides in place; made of two or three pieces of wood.FIGURE 2-4: A typical electric guitar with its major parts labeled.
Bar (electric only): A metal rod attached to the bridge that varies the string tension by tilting the bridge back and forth. Also called the tremolo bar, whammy bar, vibrato bar, and wang bar.
Body: The box that provides an anchor for the neck and bridge and creates the playing support for the right hand. On an acoustic, the body includes the amplifying sound chamber that produces the guitar’s tone. On an electric, it consists of the housing for the bridge assembly and electronics (pickups as well as tone and volume controls).
Bridge: The metal (electric) or wooden (acoustic) plate that anchors the strings to the body.
End pin: A metal post where the rear end of the strap connects. On acoustic-electrics (acoustic guitars with built-in pickups and electronics), the pin often doubles as the output jack where you plug in.
Fingerboard: A flat, planklike piece of wood that sits atop the neck, where you place your left-hand fingers to create pitches and chords. The fingerboard is also known as the fretboard, because the frets are embedded in it.
Frets: 1) Thin metal wires or bars running perpendicular to the strings that shorten the effective vibrating length of a string, enabling it to produce different pitches. 2) A verb describing worry, as in “He frets about how he’ll ever recover his lost mojo.”
Headstock: The section that holds the tuning machines and provides a place for the manufacturer to display its logo. Not to be confused with “Woodstock,” the section of New York that provided a place for the ’60s generation to display its music.
Neck: The long, clublike wooden piece that connects the headstock to the