Blues Guitar For Dummies. Jon Chappell

guitar. In Chapter 2, you discover how the guitar works and the art of fretting. Chapter 3 explains how to hold your guitar, position your right and left hands, how to tune up (which is oh, so important), and how to interpret the written notation throughout the book.

      Part 2: Setting Up to Play the Blues

      The chapters in Part 2 all deal with playing the guitar (hooray!) and creating music. Chapter 4 presents chords — the easiest way to start playing real music. In Chapter 5, you strike the strings through different strumming patterns, rhythms, and fingerpicking techniques. The overview in Chapter 6 shows how blues songs are structured, and Chapter 7 has you playing real blues music!

      Part 3: Beyond the Basics: Playing Like a Pro

      Part 3 takes you into the world of the committed guitar student. In Chapter 8, you explore lead guitar, and Chapter 9 takes you into the expressive world of melodic playing. Chapter 10 puts the finishing touches on your lead playing with certain expressive guitar techniques.

      Part 4: Sounding Like the Masters: Blues Styles through the Ages

      In Part 4 of this book, you find the style chapters, where you get to play blues in all the different styles throughout the blues’ colorful history. You discover the acoustic-based blues from the Mississippi Delta (Chapter 11), history of traditional electric blues (Chapter 12), and the electric blues’ rowdy alter ego, blues rock (Chapter 13).

      Part 5: Gearing Up: Outfitting Your Arsenal

      In Part 5, you scope out the gear you need to complete your blues rig. Chapter 14 is a handy guitar buyer’s guide that covers everything from evaluating a guitar to shopping strategies to dealing with the music store salespeople. Chapter 15, on amps and their effects, gives you a primer on guitar amps and those little magic boxes (effects) that give your guitar some superhip sounds. In Chapter 16, you find out how to change strings on both acoustic and electric guitars.

      Part 6: The Part of Tens

      The Part of Tens provides fun and interesting information in a top-ten-style format that rivals those late night talk show hosts’. The chapters in this part prioritize important information by the many blues guitarists and recordings.

      Part 7: Appendixes

      The appendixes cover important info not contained in the chapters. Appendix A explains reading music, and Appendix B provides an overview of the audio tracks you’ll find on the website at www.dummies.com/go/bluesguitarfd.

Icons Used in This Book

      In the margins of this book, you find several helpful little icons that make your journey a little easier:

      

The remember icon signifies a piece or pieces of information worth remembering. Sounds simple, huh? Some of the info comes up repeatedly.

      

In the instances that I get all techy on you, I use this icon to mark the explanations that you can skip and come back to later if you want.

      

This icon highlights info for die-hard blues guitarists (and those in the making). To step up your blues abilities, take the advice in these icons.

This icon is a hands-on, explicit directive that can change your playing from merely extraordinary to really extraordinary.

      

Pay heed to this one, or you could do damage to something — your ears, your guitar, your audience’s ears, and so on.

Where to Go from Here

      Blues Guitar For Dummies can be read straight through like a novel or by individual chapter. Even though each chapter is self-contained, music instruction dictates that certain steps be mastered before others, so Parts 2 and 3 are best experienced in order.

      If you’re a beginner, a musical klutz, or someone who really wants to follow the steps, start with Chapter 1 and read the book in sequence. If you already play a little bit, skip to Chapter 3, where I decipher the notation used in the music figures in the book. Then you’re ready for the playing chapters — Chapters 4 through 13. You don’t need to master the E chord in Chapter 3 to appreciate the advice on buying a guitar in Chapter 14. But at some point, I hope you read all the material in this book, even the most obscure trivia.

Part 1

      You Got a Right to Play the Blues

IN THIS PART …

      “Woke up this mornin’ and I feel like playin’ the blues.” Well, you don’t have to just sing about it; you can dig right in and start doing something about it! The information in this part gets you thinking like a blues guitar player. Chapter 1 outlines what’s contained in the book and spells out what you need to do from buying a guitar to playing it to maintaining it. In Chapter 2, you jump into the mechanics of what makes guitars tick — their method of sound production and how the various gizmos and other hardware operate. Get ready to assume the position in Скачать книгу