Minor Blues Jam - By Yourself on Guitar - Blues Guitar Tutorial - EP427

foreign [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] all right so in this week's lesson we're going to be learning how to play a minor key blues that's played in a minor and it's a standalone composition no jam track is needed you can do this on acoustic or electric guitar you don't need effects or any of that you can just grab your guitar and learn how to play this and it's a really good exercise there's a call and response element there and we're going to be playing out of the pentatonic so this is not anything complicated in terms of scales or chords these are basic chord shapes that you already know so i would encourage you to grab a guitar and follow along and learn this with me and and then you can use this to practice it's a really good way to practice and and then i'll show you how you can improvise with it too we'll talk through that so i've got this lesson split into two parts in this video we're going to go through the first half if you'd like to learn the second half as well as download the tablature for this lesson you can get all of those things by going to activemelody.com go to the weekly lessons page and do a search for ep427 okay so before we get started in this let me just say if you like this video uh leave a thumbs up that really does help and also leave me a comment i i really live by those comments and you know people let me know what's working and what isn't it's been a while since i've done a standalone composition like this and i kind of got more into theory and deep dives on certain topics but then i realized somebody left a comment recently saying hey you know i kind of missed those that's why i signed up to active active melody so leave a comment let me know what you think if these types of lessons are helpful or or more valuable to you let me know even if they're not let me know and plus that'll help me in the in the youtube ranking anytime youtube sees lots of comments they assume that that video is you know is loved so anyway let's talk through this song now the very first thing that happens we're playing this by the way in a minor and the first thing that happens is this minor pentatonic lick that goes [Applause] we're going to skip talking about that just yet and we're going to go right into the rhythm part we're going to start with that and we'll get back i'll go back to that but the rhythm part that i want you to learn first goes like this [Music] very basic and it happens throughout the whole song so it makes it really nice and easy and that's the call if we think of this as a call and response you can think of that as your call so what i'm doing there is i'm playing an a minor chord you know how to play an a minor chord very basic right we start by picking the fifth string and then doing a brush uh chord there a little burst chord of the a minor and notice i muted that right after i played it by resting my right hand on the strings and then i went so i'm simulating a bass line there so for that it's the e string the low e string two strokes and then my pinky goes to the third fret sixth string and then we go back to the a minor or back to the a string rather so that's really it it's like this [Music] and if you want to palm mute that where you rest the palm of your hand on the strings back here it gives it more of a bass kind of sound like a bass guitar now even if you don't get anything else out of this lesson pay attention to that because you could take that right there and then watch this this is very cool you take just that call and then go into pentatonic just go back and forth [Applause] really good exercise to sit and practice kind of call and response you're doing the call your response can be improvised it can be minor pentatonic scale but it keeps you in time and it keeps you kind of thinking about improvising without having to get out a jam track i i find myself doing more of this kind of stuff than anything and it's really a good way to learn so you might think about just taking that and working on that for a while but anyway that's the rhythm part that's the a minor rhythm okay so here's how the song started [Music] okay now that's minor pentatonic scale pattern one so we're our good old home base you know i always kind of think of that as a good starting point pattern one and i'm starting with a classic must-know blues like i mean that's in everything from jimmy page to chuck berry it's like a 101 blues like but we're gonna bar the first two strings here on the fifth fret then we're going to go to the third string on the seventh fret and we're going to do a bar or i'm sorry a bend and then play second string first string so it goes like this really cool lick and then i'm going to do a pre-bend release on the seventh fret third string and then watch this that's all we have left seven five on the fourth string and then open fifth string so all together [Music] and then we have our a and once you hit that open fifth string it's an open string so i can take my hand off the fretboard reposition it down to this a minor [Music] now i'm into the groove that we just learned all right so hopefully that makes sense you have the intro lick and then we go into the the rhythm part now this intro lick comes in on the end of one so let's count this in we'd say one and two and three and four and one and [Applause] once i hit that a note that's the one of the you know like the first measure so the rest of that's just considered like a pickup like pickup notes you know a little pickup like [Music] [Applause] now what we're gonna do here is we're gonna go this is a really cool move super easy i like showing these licks that sound good but they're easy to play this one look at that i'm just barring the first three strings on i'm sliding up to the seventh fret and i'm doing a down stroke and doing an upstroke on the one string and then going back to the fifth fret so seventh fret fifth fret and once i get to the fifth fret i go ahead and actually i want to play the kind of the rest of that a minor chord so i'm thinking of the a minor chord here using the e minor shape if we're talking caged here this would be your e minor shape right where we're barring here making our capo with our finger so that's what i'm picturing as i do this i'm thinking a minor where are my a minors oh yeah i've got an a minor here and actually i went like this would make sure i go back to that open fifth string so that i can come back down here and play the same call again got it [Music] now just a little sidebar as to what this is when you're playing in a my over a minor chord just remember you have this this is kind of a a cool little takeaway here uh if this is your minor chord that you're playing over you can go up and play the the minor chord that's two frets higher than that so in this case it would be a b minor and i can also go down down two frets and play the major chord so that'll be a g major chord there's my a minor and then there's my b minor and what i mean by that is i have these chords i can kind of pivot off of if i'm just sort of jamming or hanging out on a chord for a while like an a minor [Music] i can go back and forth between that a minor and g or i can go back and forth between the a minor and the b minor like that and so it's just a general rule when you're playing over a minor chord so just remember you can kind of work that in you can figure out the timing of how you want to do that but that's what's going on there okay so from the beginning we have [Music] okay now the song goes to a c chord and then it goes to a d and then back to the a minor it's kind of a cool little chord thing where you've got your relative major chords you've got your c chord and then you go up to the d chord which would be like your four chord in the blues and then you go back to the minor one chord so you have c d a minor and uh when i played the c i didn't just and by the way that's a c chord using the a shape but what i did but right before i played that c as i went a little lick here let me show you this lick so i'm sliding with my ring finger from the fifth fret to the seventh fret on the fifth string and then playing strings four and three on the fifth fret so i'm just going ahead and bar in the first four strings here on the fifth fret i'll talk you through this in a minute let's just learn it so it's like and then a hammer on to the seventh fret fourth string and then we slide back down to the fifth fret open and then your a i'm sorry your c chord using the a shape so all together [Music] now that's a cool lick and uh yeah i want to say that's a mark knopfler thing i don't know where i got that i know i can't remember these things anymore but i i hear this i hear this lick used a lot and i've used this look a lot and you know just about everything because it's a really familiar lick off of this a chord shape so when i'm going into a major chord using that a shape you can see where my pinky is barring in this case on the fifth fret i know that i've also got that same chord played this way where i'm playing the same bar there same little triad but i've got the e note in the bass instead so in this version i've got the c note in the bass in this version i've got the e note in the bass and so i kind of think of this as a fence and you got two sides of the fence and you can kind of visually that that's just how i think of it but on this side of the fence i've got [Music] all these little licks i can do that are based off of the major pentatonic scale for that chord i don't want to get too far into off the rails here but that's what's going on just learn this [Music] lick connect it to that chord shape that's how i'm going to say this that lick is connected to that chord shape so coming into the c chord [Music] that's how i played it so play the c chord and then played it in again up here just the way i showed you so i hammered on this time to that e note seventh fret fifth string and played the chord that way and then i took that and went slid that up two frets because that's my d chord it's the same concept right there's your d chord using the a shape so there's that side of the fence you can also think if we're thinking caged system this would be like the g shape out of cage right just sort of like the bottom chunk of that chord okay so play that and then watch this to get us back to the a minor so what i'm doing here is even though the a minor isn't happening yet like we're not to that point in the song i went ahead and jumped into the a minor pentatonic scale to pull us back in and so that's actually what i did when i played over the c chord is yet as well when i played that we weren't to the c chord yet uh we were getting to the c chord but i went ahead of the beat and played a little bit out of the c so i played like a c major pentatonic thing and so that's what i that's just something you can kind of keep in mind as you're playing something whether you're playing with a band or a jam track or even solo composition you can always play ahead of the beat i know i'm going from that d chord back to the a minor so i went ahead right and just pulled us back with the lick so that's a minor pentatonic scale going into pattern two right here so that's ninth fret third string eighth fret second string quick slide back to the seventh fret fifth fret and then seven five on the fourth string so and then look at that there's the open a i can take my hand off that's the relief when you have that open string and then go right back into that same groove all right so we've learned a lot so far let's take it from the beginning and play up to that point one two three four one [Music] [Music] all right so now we're going to go through the same chords again same structures in the same cycle and i started it off like this and then we go into the call and response thing so remember the first time we started with that little pickup lick now we've got another lick that's happening sort of in the same timing but it's a different look now this is kind of a stevie ray vaughan style blick i think of it that way still minor pentatonic scale pattern one we're going to slide with our ring finger to the seventh fret fourth string and then we're going to go five seven on the third string let me do that again now i'm going to show you it this way and then we're going to add the first string in at the end here so we go [Applause] that's what we're going to learn so we've got this part we're going to do a quick slide up to the eighth fret third string that's our blue note remember that's not the minor pentatonic scale but it is in the blues scale so we're going to slide into that note and then go back five seven five on the third string so all together [Music] now what makes it sound really cool and classy that kind of stevie ray sound is when as i'm playing that i'm playing that with my pick but i'm using my ring finger to pluck that open or not open but the first string which is behind the fifth fret here so i kind of keep a bar there so it sounds like this [Applause] hear that that note is ringing out with it it's droning underneath uh the the lick there [Music] and when i hit that last like i kind of pulled it sharp a little [Music] bit go right back into the call right okay cool lick now watch this [Music] now that we've already talked about why that works it's the same thing remember the first time we went a minor to b minor back to the a minor we're doing the same thing here but i'm just using a different voicing that's all this is i'm big on chords and voicings i mean that's like it's just an easy thing to do it's a great filler and it sounds good so what we're doing here is we're playing um an a minor shape here i've got look at the it looks like kind of like the d7 chord shape if you look at my fingers think of the d7 shape you learned down first position that's the shape that i'm using but i've got my pinky on the 10th fret uh second string so i've got those fingers there and then i've got my index finger down on the eighth fret first string so that's another way of playing an a minor chord another voicing there's three main voicings and i've covered that in other lessons you can go to the lesson on the screen now if you want uh more detail on that but um so there's your a minor slide it up to your b minor and then back so yeah and then while that's ringing out you hit your open fifth string so that you can get back to the call so you have right the second time through then [Music] all right now we go back to the c and i did the same thing i just did one little extra thing all right same little lick we did before the only difference is i did a little hammer-on pull-off on thing trill i don't know what you call that that's a clapton move um sliding up to that fifth or sorry the seventh fret on the fifth string we go back to strings four and three on the fifth fret and then that's a i just picked that once notice my my right hand one stroke there ring finger does the hammer onto the seventh fret fourth string pull off and then a hammer on to the seventh fret fifth string so slide back down open and then c chord same thing here as we did before c up to the d and then i went [Music] and that's just playing strings uh two and three seventh fret down to the fifth fret and then we watch this little bin there i got that from chuck berry keith richards as well so but it's um seven five bend both strings i i find it easiest just pull that back to the fifth fret seventh fret and then we go back to the fifth fret let it go a little sharp and then hit your a and then now you're in position to go back to the call and that's really all there is to this so it's um let's let's take it from the c [Music] back to the a minor and that's where we're going to end this first part now there's another part it actually goes into a really cool part where we go into a d minor and uh you know a whole second part but i'm going to save that for part two so we're gonna back up and play through this one more time and so you have one final version of this make sure you check out premium membership if you haven't i've got 10 years worth of lessons that are in depth like this there's courses we've just got the the essential theory course live lots of good information and also don't forget to leave a comment i always find those helpful all right we'll take a look at this one more time and then we'll see in part two one two three four one [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Active Melody

Views: 51,868

Rating: 4.9732656 out of 5

Keywords: blues guitar lesson, blues guitar, blues jam guitar, blues guitar tutorial, blues by yourself guitar, solo guitar lesson, learn blues guitar, online guitar lesson, blues guitar online, youtube guitar lesson, youtube blues guitar, activemelody, guitar education, music education

Id: 03DAQ-GaM9Y

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021