A nice and slow blues that you can play by yourself on guitar - slow blues guitar lesson - EP268

[Music] hi this is Brian with active melody calm well I know these solo blues compositions are always really popular every time I put one out I always get requests for more of them so try to throw them in from time to time so that's what we're going to be doing this week we're gonna break down a solo blues composition you can play this all by yourself it works on an acoustic or electric guitar and what's really cool about this is that it works at any tempo I'm playing it at a fairly slow tempo in this video just to demonstrate how good it sounds slow but if you speed it up it sounds really good as well and I'll demonstrate that later in the lesson just to show you how it sounds and so we're going to break down everything known for note I'll show you how to play it and then I'll also explain the why behind the notes so that you can start to use these looks when you improvise and when you write your own music so I've got this lesson split into two parts in this video we'll take a look at the first half if you'd like to watch the second half and download the tablature for this you can get that by going to active melody comm go to the weekly lessons page and do a search for ep2 6/8 alright so let me just start off by mentioning this guitar I know I'm gonna have some questions about it and if you want to skip this part and go right to the lesson you can do that by fast-forwarding to the number you see on the screen right now but this guitar is a new one to me I picked it up this week here in Nashville I was at a guitar store and I was walking through the used section which is actually the place you should start when you go to a guitar store I always check out what what the used stuff is that's one of the cool stuff usually is but anyway I see this old archtop guitar sitting on a stand and when picked it up and I didn't have a lot of expectations for it a lot of times with an old guitar like this you plug them in they look cool but then you plug them in and they don't sound that good or they don't stay in tune or something like that but this guitar was just phenomenal in the way that it R is phenomenal in the way that it plays it's the the intonation is right the action is right everything about it is perfect I couldn't put it down it was one of those things it doesn't happen that often but when it does sometimes you just have to listen to that and think well maybe I shouldn't maybe should just buy the guitar I didn't know anything about this brand it's a vago guitar it's in 1950 to Vega and I had to do some a little bit of research to even find out what Vega guitars were I had heard of Vega banjos but apparently they did a line of guitars in the 30s 40s and I guess 50s and maybe they made them after that I don't know but but that's what this is it's a Vega archetype it has a dearmond pickup everything's original on it except it didn't have some fret work done on it apparently the frets were I don't know if they replace the frets or one but whoever had this before knew what they were doing in terms of setup it's just perfect so I played this for about four hours the other night with a group of guys we get together in jam once a week and and it didn't go out of tune the entire time so if that I mean that's like unheard of in any guitar and usually at some point it's gonna get knocked out of tune but not this one so this is just the coolest guitar so in terms of tone I'm playing through I'm not playing through an amp by I'm playing through a Kemper profiler that's kem p ER you don't have to go and get a Kemper they're not cheap but I'm using a matchless head which is the the profile that I'm playing through if you want to try and get a sound like this take whatever electric guitar assuming you're playing electric here and plug plug it into your app and then dial in a little bit of overdriving a little bit of reverb you want it you don't want it too much but you want it to be so that if you play quietly or softly it sounds fairly clean but if you dig in [Music] you start to get that growl that to me is like the perfect blues tone and I can get that sound and just about any app it's just a matter of sort of playing with the overdrive and just the mistake most people make is they give it too much and then it sounds like death metal you don't want it to sound a little crunchy or if this doesn't work so okay let's talk about the song so this song is in the key of E it's a 12 bar blues one four or five chord progression very basic set up and the way that the song starts it starts on the five chord and actually let me show you how to do this is a great little takeaway for how to start a blues song by the way but the five chord in this case is a B chord and you can play any version of them B major where you lay b7 in this case I'm playing a be nine chord so you just take your b7 chord then you take your pinkie and you bar the first two strings they're on the second fret that makes that a b9 it gives it a little jazzy or feel then then if you just play it straight up b7 but the the technique is to start a half step above that so in this case would be a c9 so whatever your five chord is just walk everything up a set a friend our F fret and then walk it down so that's your takeaway if you want to look for a really cool way to start a blue sign truck try doing that just go find your five chord go up a half step and then resolve on the volume okay so then the next thing I played after that it goes right into the one chord now what's cool about this is we're playing in the major pentatonic scale now the mistake a lot of people make when it comes to the slow blues like this is they think minor pentatonic scale and nothing else but a lot of Blues comes out of that major pentatonic scale guys like BB King you know they would often play and then in the major pen time so that's what actually what I'm trying to emulate here is kind of a BB so now I'm playing in a major pentatonic scale pattern four which is right there and I go through all five patterns by the way in the blues lead course for premium members that active melody but this is pattern four of the major pentatonic scale and it starts on the second fret first string do a slide up to the fourth fret and then I come up to the seventh fret on the first string and you can hold that note as long as you want that's another nice thing about playing well when you're playing by yourself like this this sort of solo style you can obviously do that but even if you're playing this with a full band everyone would be waiting for you to go and when you do that you're coming down to the one that's when the drummer would know when to come in but they would all be watching you so after that you've come to the fourth fret first string and then you're gonna do a full Bend and release on the seventh fret second string and then the fifth fret second so all together and that's your one now the next thing that happens is that and this is sort of a call-and-response style format although it's it's not real strict where I keep going back to the same call every time in the same place but I have you have to define the song a little bit and so this is how I'm doing it just a few notes there that's all you need to define where you're at the song so I'm starting with the open sixth string and then I'm gonna slide from the second fret to the fourth fret sixth string and then play the second fret fifth string and then back to the sixth string so all together you have and that really becomes the definer for where we are in the song so let's back it up now from the beginning right starting to you start to feel it a little bit especially if you start tapping your foot you can really start to feel where you're at in the song that's the next thing we're gonna play it's gonna be right in that pattern for again so it's the same notes really we're just kind of tracing over them again but we're gonna slide up to the sixth fret fourth string fifth fret second string back to the sixth fret fourth string and then we're gonna do two bands on the seventh fret second string two bends with a release and then down to the fifth fret second string and then that last note is the sixth fret third string so altogether we have [Music] and then after that I played and this is a great takeaway elected I use this lick all the time because it's start is taking advantage of those two open strings anytime I'm playing the key of e I use this like so it's to open one string we're gonna do an upstroke with the right hand and then we're gonna do a Down stroke on the second string so you're east ring your B string and then middle finger goes down on the second fret third string so yeah and then you do this hammer on open third string hammer on to the first fret and then you can play your low E string or the sixth string so so just remember that leg if you're ever soloing improvising the key of e you can always get to that so if you're playing something high on the neck it allows you to take your hand off the fretboard and play those two open strings I use that a lot okay let me back up now from the beginning [Music] okay we're gonna do that same call again and then the second time through the response will be and this time we're playing in the minor pentatonic scale pattern - do you hear how different it sounds it's a it's a very different feel than their real happy stuff sounds a little more serious a little more sad so we're again we're playing a minor pentatonic scale pattern - for the key of E so and you can see how those two are right beside each other that should be like a little lightbulb goes off and you think oh wait I could go back and forth real easy if I'm one to improvise between the minor pentatonic scale on the major in that little spot and you have these little spots all over the neck okay so it starts by sliding up to the fourth fret third string third fret second string fifth fret second string and then we're gonna go third fret first string oh and then fifth fret first week so you can see it's a little boxing that's a half Bend on the fifth fret first string and then you do a pull off to the third fret first string and then back to the fifth fret second string so [Music] and that last note is the third fret second string so all together and then we go to the five chord so to get to that five chord we're gonna play the same call like we did for the e part but we're just gonna move everything up a set of strings so we're gonna start on the fifth string and slide up to the fourth fret just like we did before this time the only difference is just to give it a little different feel as I went ahead and barred their first four strings on the second fret play strings four and three now you could have done that over the one chord as well if you want to give it that feel it just just depends on what you're looking for so backing up we have now the next thing which I forgot to mention was those two notes that's just your middle finger on the sixth fret third string and then your index finger on the fifth fret second string and you can think of those two notes as being two notes out of the a major Barre chord or you can just think of them as two notes in that major pentatonic scale pattern form either way they're both work really well over that eight alright so we've already covered a lot of information let me back up and play through everything I'll play through it slowly up to where we're at [Music] here's that a part right same thing is the e part but we're now playing it up a set of strings now the next thing I played so that gets us back to the one chord it sounds complicated but it's actually pretty easy so we're gonna slide back into that pattern four of the major pentatonic scale that's the sliding into that sixth fret third string fifth fret second string and then back to the sixth fret third string and then that's the same length played twice it's just a half Bend on the seventh fret second string you don't want to do a full Bend and remember I have been it's just one fret above where you started so it's a band release play it without the bin and then your fifth fret second string did it twice and then on following the same timing but we're changing the notes obviously we're gonna play seventh fret sixth fret and fifth fret on the first string there's the third fret first ring so what I'm doing here in my mind I'm going from that major pentatonic scale pattern four and then once I come down and this is just a little chromatic walk down but I come down here to pattern one of the minor pentatonic scale for let's sort of your home base for when you're playing lead right so that's where I came down to that third fret first string so backing up we have and then after that it's the second fret second string and then we're gonna play the 1 & 2 string with an upstroke and if you only hit the 1 string that's fine too that's what I was trying to do we're back to that same call and then I played up response to guys real cool maybe my favorite lick in the whole thing just because I use it so much so what we're doing is we're sliding up to pattern 2 of the minor pentatonic scale for you so middle finger comes up to the 4th fret 3rd string index fingers in the 3rd fret 2nd string but then you play the open 1 string that's what gives it that cold feel and then back down to the 2nd fret 3rd string can you slide it today and do a quick hammer on between the first fret and then open string there on the third string you can do it as many times as you want but you hear that a lot in blue all right so let's back up again from the beginning you can see there's another caller now the next leg goes like this now we're going to the five chord right here's the leg so we're going back to that same pattern four of the major pentatonic scale we're starting there that's that's where we're starting so we're sliding up to the sixth fret third string fifth fret second string seventh fret second string and then my ring finger comes up to the ninth fret second string now let me show you how to play this and then I'll show you how to think about it that's what we're gonna play so that's a half Bend on the ninth fret second string play the ninth fret second string without the band there's the seventh fret second string ring finger comes down on the ninth fret third string and then there's a hammer on between the seventh fret and the eighth fret on the third string so do an upstroke now on the same seventh fret second string and your ring finger goes down the ninth fret fourth string sounds like a lot but when you when I show you where this is coming from it'll all make sense so I knew we're going to the five chord at this point and actually I visualized this chord that's just your B major Barre chord where you bar here on the seventh fret so I was picturing that [Music] so I could see all those notes here you can see what I just did there I just made the core because this kind of dancing around that court and these links that you learn around chord shapes has become the key to really unlocking the entire neck because once you learn this little lick you can use that in over any court J over G anytime you're playing a G now you could use that leg right and so you start to realize the power of these licks and how when you connect them to these chord shapes it become very useful right there so that's your B and then it goes to the a chord right so that that's your B is your name major Barre chords for school I'm taking that coordinate that I just made and I'm walking it down two frets so after we play the a I played so I'm gonna dance around that a chord shape so the first thing I was thinking about was your name chord playing your a7 chord so I was thinking about that now so it's that eighth fret second string play twice fifth fret second string middle finger goes down on the sixth fret third string right it's in the chord and then your how that switches from that happy sound to the more serious sound and that's because we're kind of going from that major back to the minor pentatonic scale we're going down to pattern to now of the minor pentatonic scale for e so it's the third fret second string middle finger goes down on the fourth fret third string do a quick slide down to the second fret and then do a hammer-on from the open third string to the first fret then you can hit that low E string or the sixth string all right so let's see [Music] and then you could just got your turn around and that turnaround is very useful it's very easy to play I'm using my middle finger I'm sliding up to the fourth fret third string and this is where I'm using some hybrid picking you don't have to do that but I'm picking on the third string and I'm using my middle finger on the second string my ring finger on the first string so I'm going [Music] so that's all you're doing with the left hand you're just walking that fourth fret third string down to the third fret down to the second fret and then you do a hammer on from the open third string to the first fret so and then we walk up to the five chord classic blues turn room so you had played the open fifth string or you're a first fret fifth string and then play the second fret fifth string but make sure you use your middle finger so that you can play your b7 chord [Music] and then we go into the second half all of that's just the first half so you can see there's a lot of information in this lesson but but we're gonna end this part one video right there and we'll save the second half for premium members and remember if you're not a premium member on this lesson on all lessons you get the jam tracks you get the tablature get all the materials that go along with it and all the instructional video okay so let's back up from the beginning and play all of this first half I'll play through it slowly and then I'll see you in part two so that you can learn the rest all right here we go [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: Active Melody

Views: 1,507,846

Keywords: slow blues guitar lesson, slow blues guitar, how to play blues on guitar, learn blues guitar, easy blues guitar lesson, simple blues guitar, basic blues guitar tutorial, guitar lesson, guitar lessons, learn blues on guitar, how to improvise on guitar, music education, guitar education, guitar tutorial, blues guitar tutorial, play by yourself on guitar, solo guitar, solo guitar lesson

Id: I1LdeJuynRs

Length: 25min 15sec (1515 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 04 2018