The CLASSIC Blues Riff for Beginners !

[Music] hey everybody Welcome To The Music Corner my name is Jonathan K grab your guitar and stick around for the next 30 minutes we're going to work on the classic blues riff here's what it sounds [Music] like [Music] and that probably rings a bell I found in my years of teaching that I think that riff is in our cultural DNA kids recognize it adults recognize it we've all heard it in one form or another I tend to refer to it as the Muddy Waters blues riff because Muddy Waters uh wrote some great songs using that riff or variations on that riff but we've all heard it in a variety of forms so let's call it the classic blues riff for today it's a rhythm guitar riff remember the definition of rhythm guitar is a repetitive phrase that forms the heart of a tune okay now we're going to teach you that riff today but I'm going to show you what you can do with it in terms of variations and especially in terms of doing it with another musician for most of us we get a ton of satisfaction not just from mastering an instrument but from playing music with another person or band some sort of Ensemble so stick around because we're going to get you into a position where you can do that as well next time you're at a jam session next time your cousin comes over with the saxophone whatever the case happens to be you'll have something to offer it's a great feeling it's a great riff so stick around let's work on the the heart of uh this classic blues riff we'll get into some scales in a minute where you can uh solo on top of this riff you'll see what I mean the Riff is in the key of G what that means for us is going to be focusing on your third and fourth strings let's focus on the right hand for a minute the third and fourth strings of your guitar we're talking about the D and the g strings but you're going to be playing those simultaneously now this takes good aim with your pick so let's focus in on the right hand here the d and g strings the third and fourth strings now keep in mind the skinniest string right here is not the first string so count up 1 2 3 and here's your third string also known as G and your fourth string D so right away you have a challenge you want to play those two strings essentially simultaneously with one firm confident stroke you don't want to hit any other strings especially the two skinny ones now if you've never done this before this kind of aiming this selective picking it's going to take you you know a little practice time to get used to doing this you want to be able to do it with with confidence now technically I'm hitting the fourth string first and as my pick travels downward I'm also hitting the third skinny string now those two notes G and D well those are two of the three notes of a G major chord and that puts us squarely in the key of G for today's lesson and because this is a classic blues riff I'm going to show you a g blues scale that's going to sound great with this riff okay so that's it for the right hand you're GNA stand those two strings for this whole riff okay now let's talk about the left hand for a minute I'm going to play it for you and keep your eyes on my left hand here and uh you're going to be able to teach yourself just I'm watching my left hand but I'll talk you through it as well let's focus on the left [Music] [Music] hand now if you focus on my left hand you'll notice I was clamping down on multiple strings using one finger at a time now that's not mandatory but the long run it's a lot easier than using two separate fingers here's what that same riff would look like if I use two separate fingers each time I squeeze down here it comes left hand now I have some students who pref preer to use two separate fingers and that's fine I have other students who prefer to use one finger flattening out and that works too in the long run I think that second way is easier all right now let me talk you through what's going on here because in about five minutes you're going to be able to play this just fine so stick with me here again we're focusing on the third and fourth strings the G and D strings the first thing we do is we're going to strum those two strings open no left hand whatsoever Second Step those same two strings at the fifth fret now to make it clear as I illustrate this I am going to use two separate fingers right now I'm using my middle and ring fingers both of those fingers squeezing at the fifth fret so far we have zeros and fives back to zero threes and the last step zero so here's what you want to memorize 05 5 03 0 I'll say it again 0 five 03 0 okay here comes the 0 5 0 3 0 I'm going to remind you again that we are playing on two separate strings right you're brushing them at the same time I'm calling this zero when they both squeeze behind the fifth fret I'm calling that five makes sense right back to zero again at the third fret back to zero I'm going to play it a few times slowly I found in my time teaching that students learn a lot just from hearing it done and being able to watch here it comes again [Music] slowly I'm going to do it again 0 5 0 3 0 okay getting the hang of it the first step I call it comprehension do you understand what your job is for most people that comes pretty quickly especially if I'm doing my job right the second step of course is execution can you do it that's up to you that takes a little bit of practice and the third step is making it sound musical I can play this and make it sound less musical by going slow not having a steady Rhythm but that's common everyone sounds like this at first they might play the riff [Music] but it's not quite flowing yet so step three is making it musical okay so I'm using my middle and ring fingers on my left hand I could be using my index in middle fingers same sound I'm going to leave that up to you here's what it would look like with my index in [Music] Middle okay notice I'm really not looking at my right hand too much I'm keeping my eyes on my left hand frankly with a little practice you get a sense of radar with your guitar pick and by the way we're doing this with a pck today uh you get a sense of radar with that pick especially assuming you're right-handed and you just don't need to look now in the beginning of course you do have to look it's is that it's hard to look at two places at once right right hand back to left hand so for this particular riff for today's lesson here I'd encourage you to ultimately keep your eyes on your left hand uh at first if you have to look at your pick that's totally normal but see if you can break that habit and you know pretty quickly and keep your eyes on your left hand okay so now there's one part I haven't told you yet and that is the what I call the response this is a call and response riff you've been hearing the call and here's the response fat string [Music] three okay put it together and it sounds like [Music] this [Music] you got to have both the call and the response by the way call and response is a a musical term that goes way back in human musical history it's a a classic um almost like a a primal way of of making music um a call and a response it's that that that type of uh musical communication is found in lots of types of music it's a classic a classic way to set up a song so this is a a classic Blues rhythm guitar riff with a classic form which is the call and response form here it comes again okay now I think you're getting the idea let's go back to the very first way I did it where I was flattening out a individual leftand finger doing what they call a bar as opposed to using two separate fingers I think I mentioned earlier in general this is the easier way to do it with practice think about it you're only using one finger half as difficult as using two fingers right so the way I prefer to do this is with my ring finger squeezing at the five let's look at the left hand again my ring finger is squeezing hard at the fifth fret now admittedly I'm touching four skinny strings but all my pressure is on the two Center strings okay does that make sense I'm squeezing hardest on the two Center strings and I'm squeezing relatively lightly on the two skinny strings cuz I'm not really worried about those in fact I'm doing myself a favor because the two skinny strings now they sound like this kind of deadened which is actually great because if I happen to hit those strings by mistake the two skinny ones the sound is going to be either completely muffled or mostly muffled okay so ring finger on my left hand now if you haven't used your ring finger much on the guitar or in life period your left hand ring finger can be a a pretty wimpy finger you may not have a whole lot of confidence this is how you get to that point though the more you use it the more confidence it's going to get so my left hand is going to be in charge of the five fives here's the zeros and here's the fives you with me so far Z five and where you put your thumb is going to be significant you know I'm keeping my thumb up here because it feels good A lot of people would recommend keeping your thumb around you know curved behind the neck on the curvy part of the neck I should say with the thumb pointing straight up towards the ceiling nothing wrong with that you're going to find what works for you keep in mind that your thumb is mobile your thumb is portable your thumb can go wherever it needs to go so don't feel you have to be locked into one thumb position definitely experiment with this and see what you can what you can do to guarantee a good sound okay so so far we have 05 with a bar here in my left hand 03 now that should feel pretty good because our index fingers in general are are more confident and stronger than our ring fingers so same deal technically with my left hand I'm squeezing hard with my index finger putting my pressure on the the D and the g the third and fourth strings but I'm also touching the two skinny strings but it's not a problem I'm just not strumming those two strings and chances are if I do strum those two strings they're going to sound like that which is great because again we don't want those sounds anyways in fact I'd encourage you if you do it like me with h one finger doing a bar to actually try to find just the right angle so those two skinny strings do sound muffled and dead okay so now I'm going to run through this again using the bar technique let's call it the bar technique where my ring is doing a bar at five my index is doing a bar at three and by the way that sets me up perfectly to reach over and get the fat string at three the low E string at three at the end of the Riff okay so here it comes this is the way I did at the very very beginning of today's lesson [Music] okay so I think by now you've got the idea and you've probably thought of more than one tune that is based on this classic blues riff I hope you have so let's talk about where we can go with this aside from the fact that it sounds great and with a with just a little bit of practice you can sound like a great blues guitar player there's a lot we can do with this for the future so as you work on this and iron out the wrinkles and make it sound better and smoother you know it's going to take you some practice time but it's going to be worth it I'll give you some examples of why it's going to be worth it okay so it's a classic Blues Rhythm guitar riff and the key of G any other musicians you know friends family anybody on any instrument anybody who has some experience playing uh uh lead guitar soloing on the harmonica saxophone when you give them this foundation and tell them you're in the key of G if they don't know already that's their chance to shine and do their thing and improvise on whatever instrument they happen to have once you get the ball rolling then the jam session has started okay there's a lot of great players out there who want to show the world what they can do on their particular instrument but they need a foundation that's what rhythm guitar is for and this is one of the simplest clearest most classic rhythm guitar foundations you can have the classic blues riff okay so my point is next time you're in a situation where someone has an instrument or you're in a position to invite someone over to your back porch and play some music you start doing this and hopefully they'll be able to Jump Right In if you need to you can tell them that the G blue scale is a great scale to use it's the most appropriate scale for them to improvise on using this uh the G minor pentatonic scale sounds great too and we're going to talk about both of those in a minute okay like I said at the beginning of uh of the program today playing with at least one other musician or playing as part of a group uh it's almost like a big reward you get for all the time you spent in front of your computer or sitting on the sofa all the time you spent working on uh lessons whether it's on YouTube or with your teacher once you start playing with another human being and having fun it's like a great reward for all the work you did you know so with today's program here I want to put you in a position you can start to get those benefits okay so my point is you work hard here and you've got something that you can use for Jam sessions for the rest of your life in a minute I'm going to show you how you can insert notes from the G blue scale and the G minor pentatonic scale so that you can be someone doing the leag guitar parts maybe you could teach this to a friend of yours teach them this classic kind of Muddy Waters Blues Rhythm guitar riff and then you could be the one improvising over it there's no reason why you can't be good at two things rhythm guitar in the one hand lead guitar in the other hand okay we'll get to that in one second all right for the fun event I'm going to show you a quick little variation because there are zillions of variations on this classic riff so here's a really easy one I'm going to play it for you see if you can spot how this is just a little bit different than the way we've been doing it one two [Music] 3 Can you spot the difference a couple little a couple little subtle differences numerically I just played 0530 okay 0530 and then instead of answering back in a fancier way I just did two nice steady thumps on my fat E string okay quick reminder the first way I did it was 0503 and I call this heartbeat heartbeat 0503 heartbeat heartbeat you can mix and match here's what would sound like if it did one and then did the other and kept alternating back and forth here's the first one and the second one first one second one pretty subtle right but it keeps your mind going you don't you don't get uh hypnotized and forgetful about the Riff you know gives you something to think about and challenge yourself like I said there are a million variations on this and these are just two ways of doing this classic riff okay so you've been observing and learning the rhythm guitar part here so let's talk about what you can do to solo improvise guys have fun if someone else is doing this and maybe you're playing with a piano player and they're doing this this Riff on the piano they're doing a piano version of this well it's nice to be able to add in some lead guitar notes it's easy to get intimidated by lead guitar because we see those people screaming playing high notes on their electric guitar and cruising up and down the neck like they've been doing it since they were born you know um but it all starts with learning an appropriate scale mashing that scale and then get to the point where you can take the notes from that scale and mix up the order and create your own song using those notes not so let's talk about the G blue scale absolutely the most useful scale to play along with this key of G blu's riff we're going to focus on the three skinny strings okay so for a moment here focus on just the three skinny strings we're not going to use the three fat strings we're going to do the G blue scale in a specific format here that's just going to use the three skinny strings so here's the pattern you're going to start on the third string also known as the G string you're going play two notes in that string the first two notes of the G blue scale it's going to sound like this 03 and let's focus on the left hand we can see these notes the 03 okay those are the first two notes that's on the third string zero and third fret okay second skinny string the B string you're going to play 1 2 3 right in a row like this 1 2 3 so far we have third string 03 second string 1 2 [Music] 3 we're almost done you can hear the end is coming here skinny string 1 [Music] three now see when I get my fingers out of the way don't actually do that at home you want to keep your fingers close I'm take I'm taking my fingers out of the way here because I want you to be able to see it's actually a bad habit having your fingers curled around at all times that's the way you want to go but I want you to be able to see this clearly so I'm getting my fingers out of the way in a minute I'll play it for you where I keep all my fingers nice and close so let's review the pattern if you have a pencil write this down [Music] 03 1 2 3 1 three I'm going to go nice and slowly see if you can do this along with Me 0 3 1 2 3 1 3 and I'm hoping that you're doing the same fingering I am meaning definitely use your ring finger for any of those threes use your middle finger for the two and use your index finger for the ones my hand ends up being nice and organized I don't really have to move my elbow my forearm my shoulder nothing has to move nice and organized I highly recommend doing the fingering exactly the way I did it okay open string ring finger index middle ring index ring okay you're going to be tempted to use other fingers you know we don't always like using our ring finger if you don't have to trust me this is how it get strong and fast open ring index middle ring index ring now just when you thought you're starting to get it you have to be equally comfortable going back down the neck okay 3 1 3 2 1 3 0 3 1 3 2 1 3 0 3 1 3 2 1 3 okay we're going to recap this in a second but here's a quick reminder of why we're doing this that classic blues riff that you've been learning today it's just begging to have someone on some instrument to join in with that and play some some uh improvising Blues sounds and the g blue scale is a perfect scale to choose from okay so that's why we're focusing on the G blue scale and the g blue scale I'm showing you focuses our attention on the lower part of the guitar the first three Frets you can play G blue scales all up and down the neck okay and that can be a little bit intimidating at first so I'm keeping it simple the way I I like to teach people keep keeping the the G blue scale on the first three Frets okay going up the neck higher I always say it's kind of like being in the deep end of the pool you know you feel like you lose your frame of reference and you can Panic we don't want that right we want Comfort here okay so do the G blue scale with me from the low note to the high note and then from the high note back to the low note and again we're focusing on the three skinny strings okay 03 1 2 3 13 hope you wrote that down I'll say it again 03 1 2 3 13 and then back down the way you came 3 1 3 2 1 3 0 okay here it comes do it with me slowly third string [Music] open back [Music] down notice how my left hand didn't move I didn't have to shift I didn't have to do any crazy stuff because every finger had its own place its own job to do that's how you get fast that's how you stay relaxed a lot of benefits to doing the correct finger so especially the ring finger I hope when you're on the third fret I hope you're using your ring finger on the third fret it's worth it in the long run even if your ring finger doesn't feel 100% confident at first this is exactly how you get confident okay so imagine someone else either on guitar or piano or some other instrument is doing this and here you come with your blue [Music] scale okay having fun with those notes mixing up the orders when you hear people impr improvising a lot of lot of the time what they're doing is they're taking an appropriate scale and mixing up the notes playing them in any order they want whatever sounds musical to their ear in a nutshell that's what a lot of improvising is now you can get a lot more complicated and have even more fun but that's a great way to start off identify the appropriate scale play those notes in any order you want as long as you play only those notes okay now for the fun of it I'm going to put both of these things together I'm going to play the classic rhythm guitar riff here but instead of responding remember we call this call and response instead of responding with a heartbeat heartbeat I'm going to fill in that space instead with some notes in the G blue scale check this [Music] [Music] out you like that one I did two skinny strings remember how I have three on this string and three on this string and remember how I told you to do it with your ring finger I lied you can do them with your index on both of them and get that classic two string sound I'm doing a little bar right there I'm squeezing two skinny strings on the third fret now even though I'm using a finger I uh I told you not to use of the third fret I am playing two notes from the G blue scale which is the idea here and by combining them you get that nice thick rock and roll kind of sound rock and roll well rock and roll came from the blues so it's a blue sound that that rock and roll adopted for its [Music] own now right what you've got here is a complete sound right you've got that rhythm guitar setting the beat letting the listener know we're in the world of the Blues letting them know why we're in the key of G you know subconsciously they they get that message but you can respond with this nice improvising technique right so put it this way you're the rhythm guitar player and the lead guitar player put [Music] together okay I think you get the idea now so the way we're playing today is uh based on rhythm guitar no doubt about it and remember rhythm guitar is really any repetitive phrase that forms the heart of the song especially when it's done over and over and over it establishes the beat of the song it establishes the key we're in it establishes the type of music is it Blues is it rock is it reggae is it you know what's going on and then we're adding on an appropriate scale in this case the G blue scale a minute ago I mentioned the G minor pentatonic now we're just about out of time but I'm going to run you through the G minor pentatonic very quickly here it's so close to the G blue scale okay it's exactly what we just did with one note missing 03 like before 1 3 1 3 03 1 3 13 Can you spot the note that we're leaving out we're leaving out that twoo on the second skin [Music] string okay sounds almost the same right the G minor pentatonic has a lot in common with the G blue scale literally there's one note different the blue scale is a six note scale and the pentatonic obviously Penta is a five note scale that's all but the G minor pentatonic sounds great with this as well someday we'll talk about uh when to use a minor pentatonic scale and we'll talk about when to use a Blu scale but if the song you're playing has a word Blues in there somewhere chance are the blues scale is going to sound just fine if you have any questions about what you're seeing today don't hesitate to give us a call or better yet send us an email you've been watching the music corner and thanks for watching my name is Jonathan KIU come on back and watch some more appreciate it I'll play out here a little more of this Classic Blue sound thanks [Music] [Music] the

Channel: Song Bike - jkehew1

Views: 1,848,232

Keywords: guitar, lessons, blues, classic, riff, muddy waters, bad to the bone, thorogood, easy, quick, best, free, beginner, instruction, acoustic, electric, jonathan, kehew, fun, simple, easiest, song-biike, songbike, song, bike

Id: 8tcPEHfiKUI

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2014