Understanding Blues Guitar - Part I of IV Knowledge Is Power! Communicate - Not Copy.

hi it's Richard Richard guitars and as promised I'm going to be doing a few videos to do a bit of tuition and yes it might be like the blind leading the blind but who cares but I believe I'll be able to help someone out there okay and I'm hoping you'll enjoy the hopefully more relaxed manner and it'll all be completely off-the-cuff improvised as we go along and I know editing so I'm gonna make a right fool myself no doubt along the way but um there's a few of us stuck at home at the moment with stuff that's going on around so at least it'll be if nothing else if not educational entertaining in some way so right then what we're gonna be tackling is blues concepts okay and if you've got any questions fire them away put them in the comments below because I'll tackle any level if we want to go if you want me to go back a step you know it's hard to pitch to know where to go with this but I'm gonna start today by an angle I'm gonna start with an angle and then we'll see where we go from there okay so today's angle is why you need to have more knowledge knowledge is power so we say knowledge is power so for example I could sit here and it would be so easy and I see it day in day out guitar tutors online some great tutors out there but but you know a classic thing would be someone doing a you know and then they might go yeah something like that yeah something something just rust mate oh we could just go round and round and round around circles just coming up with licks and licks and licks and Nix Nix Nix and mix but the point is you still don't know what you're doing and you're kind of copy cutting it copycat style and I see when I was teaching here 25 years ago when I was teaching when I actually played guitar I would be teaching people who were in bands and they knew all the songs they knew how to play in time they knew everything they were doing but they had no idea what they were playing and I think that that same concept goes for playing the blues and to me it's like reading a book I could read that I could read a book in French and I could adapt my you know my skill to I could learn to read this book and sound very fluent and proper and if I read that book for a you know six months I could probably sound French but still have absolutely no concept of what I was doing at all and I'd always be relying on learning the next script so that I could sound French again and I kind of see that a lot in guitar playing and so what I want to do is give you the tools and the understanding to actually be creative and expressive with your playing at any level whatsoever and we are talking or this is not complicated stuff this is something that the absolute complete beginner can do right from the earliest phase of playing so that's what we're gonna be working on getting you to understand the blues we're gonna break it apart and we're gonna have a bit of fun playing around with it so what the hell's happened to me tell them something like that do we do it again the blurry blues I got the blurry booze right let's go No okay so just certain amount of presumed knowledge and I have written out a few bits and bobs and stuff that would be really useful for you to know that do not worry if you don't know about it okay so hopefully we're staying in focus now I want you to think about whether you know any of this stuff on here cuz this gives me a bit of an idea about who I'm talking to here have you heard of intervals do you know what an interval is yes or no it doesn't matter none of this matters if you don't know about any of it it doesn't matter but tell me if you know because obviously if you were sitting here with me now would be having to chat about it that obviously without me knowing I can't help you so intervals have you ever heard of an interval do you know what it is do you have a basic knowledge of chord construction do you know how chords are created it's really useful to know for blues this is all focusing on blues have you ever heard of the diatonic scale kind of like a major scale or doremi far so last you do during me far soul are Tito that's the diatonic scale the pentatonic scale do you know what a pentatonic scale is I'm kind of hoping you might do and then the blue scale do you know the difference between the pentatonic scale and the blue scale okay I've got a little diagram there and that is basically a diagram that you'd expect to see floating around a lot on the internet and books and videos in the old days that is basically a major scale from root to root so it's like through two octaves it's a major scale played from the root to the root and then I would love you to tell me how much of that you already know or whether you know any of it and don't worry if you know sod-all it doesn't matter because I will help you twelve bar blues that's what we're going to be kind of looking at now I'm going to be showing what I'm kind of hoping to do is to build a 12 bar blues but with knowledge knowledge is power yes I want you to basically create your own 12 bar blues and that's what I'm going to be trying to get you to do I want you to create your own 12 bar blues that sounds bluesy and you're gonna have the added benefit that you didn't just copy it it wasn't just a complete copycat which you can you could copy what I'm doing but I'm I'm trying to give you the tools to do this yourself to improvise and to play the blues with knowledge okay that's where we're going here and it does not matter we're gonna be doing at the bait you know doesn't matter what level I know you can do it this is the point it's not complicated okay now then I posted a picture on facebook and if you haven't seen it I'll put a link to it and if you can't get access to that picture I want you to tell me and I can put the picture on my webpage I can do it on a blog you see I could put the image on a blog now what that picture was showing what that picture was showing was intervals and it was a picture of our pentatonic scale so if I start here so this is the bit that I'm thinking that a lot of you may already know okay the pentatonic scale [Music] okay [Music] I want you to know that that's the pentatonic scale okay the difference between and that's in the position one there are five positions in total and those five positions will take you up the fretboard to make you sound like you know what you're doing everywhere it's the same notes there's only five notes it's called a pentatonic scale because it's got five Penta Penta scale so pentatonic five tones so we've got the position one four five five positions I'm not showing you them right now and it's not for today's lesson but you can find them absolutely all over the place key to remember is you're always playing the same notes that's really important okay they're different shapes because the notes are found at different places do they look different you need to learn them so we're gonna be looking at first position okay and there's a very good reason why we're gonna be looking at first position so everything that I show you for the four this period is gonna be in first position and the reason is I want you to learn and to understand how the chords moving behind what you're playing impact on what you're playing and this is where we are going to be looking at intervals the sound between don't know any complicated already to get phased away here so when we play a chord okay this is and this is gonna be our one chord this is gonna be the first chord if you know about the 12 bar blues you know it's a one four five progression one four five and what we mean by that is it's the first and then it's the one two three four fourth note in the scale more cord and the five chord one four five again I've got a right onto just but purely for today's lesson I got to keep saying anything you don't understand tell me and the more I know who doesn't understand what I can help so blues four five this is what a blues progression is going to be following the three chords a seven D seven and a seven day I'm going to be focusing on the one chord and if you look at the twelve bar blues you'll see this one chord in the twelve bar blues in the twelve bar blues we have one bar two bars three bars four bars it can vary a bit you know it's all sorts of variations you can do on this this is a real old fashioned kind of twelve bar blues then we go back to we let me go to the four chord for two bars then we're back to the one chord for two more bars and then it appears again down there and the key is I'm going to now show you why the notes kind of work okay if you look at that graphic that I want you to see you'll see that there are some they're all in different colors okay and now there's a reason for that those colors the more vibrant colors are chord tones okay chord tones are what you follow in any music notes that you play as a lead guitarist will always blend with the chord tones the tones that make up the chord that you're playing over it's not rocket science if I've got three notes that make up a chord or four notes that make up a chord every note you play will interact with those four notes and now either sound good or they'll sound bad and here's a really basic example so I go okay let me go let me make it sound bluesy so okay this is the one chord so all I've done that is loop around on one chord this is the chord that we're gonna be playing on all the time if I do this that should be pretty obvious to anybody who's playing a guitar or anyone listening to the video that no sounds pretty bad it doesn't work okay parsing tones [Music] another second so it's bad though if we hit that note we know to stab business to know that works right so em so if we're playing the 1 chord and we hit this note it's awful and there's reasons for that and that's what we're gonna study a bit today so chord tones if I hit the note next to it here the reason that works is because it's the root of the chord okay those notes are on the same different different octaves but they are all the root note if you look at the diagram that I've shown you it'll be a bright color icon what color it was but maybe red and that would mean hey it's a safe note okay so we can rest we can rest the note and we call it resolution or resolving whenever you're playing the blues quite often the notes that you can resolve to or the way that you flow to will be chord tones okay the most obvious one is the root so if we play that again [Music] straightaway to blues okay all I did then was for pentatonic nose [Music] okay I rested on the roof I'll do another one lower down I'm resting sorry all I'm playing is the pentatonic notes [Music] this is what I want you to mess around doing I could do an infinite number below if I like it you learn it again you learn it yourself Joe Satriani said once while we're having a chat at the pub he said he said his hardest problem is learning his own songs because he would do all his to do his Lugar so you think and then he's got to learn it because he's done it on the record and so when he was in the studio it was relatively improvised it would it would be more artful structured in from improvisation a knowledge of where the beginning the middle the end is and then there's some wiggly stuff in there but and then it creates a song and he'd be flowing with the core tones and the chord tones would direct the song and the song is based around the chord tones but he then has to learn it afterwards so when you're doing this don't like it [Music] stick with that one so I like that word and then you're creating a catalog you're creating a catalog of riffs or licks that you like you're not having to learn these from someone else you need to learn techniques so I would be able to show you or you could pick up techniques that help you make your playing sound more creative but you're not relying on just being force-fed stuff yourself yeah hopefully this is making some sense so we've done the route we could do with one down here at the bottom so I mean that's down there below isn't it let me think of it no I wanna do something simple enough you can you get the idea I'm just playing notes and I'm coming back to the roots let's move on from the root we'll do the fifth okay what is 1/5 1/5 is when you build a chord you do the root the third v so v is a resolution point it's a resolving point when you play your riffs or you look at your licks when you play your licks v as a chord tone it's one of the chord tones in that chord it's gonna sound resolved so let's find the v it's in your diagram I've written it you can see the diagram so for the people aren't looking at the diagram right now v is 1 2 3 4 5 that's the diatonic scale I talked about earlier that you need to learn so that 1 through 3 my so that's your major scale bingo okay so we're gonna go one two three four five and we'll find that same note here it appears twice so we know where the roots are we've done that one now we've got the fifth all within our pentatonic scale so let's come up with the riff okay I mean so many things we could do so on let's like on some Sat let's put some backing on because this is why you need it because we can't really feel bluesy Ness we've got the bluesy stuff going on the background couldn't be simpler just a little little ditty just [Music] the sudden so so I started on the for now the four four isn't a room it's not a core tone for that the interval of a fourth which is one two three a fourth isn't the chord time so if we hang around on a fourth it's not gonna sound good so let's just do that [Music] it's not a chord tone so it's not gonna sound good but as long as you move off it okay as long as you move away from it it's gonna sound all right so for example what's up over four five four five keeping it in a pentatonic scale there so the obvious thing to do here [Music] okay I've brought up the roof this resulted so result of the bit okay so their results are wanting to come up with some ideas that work resolving to the fifth now then let's look at a really really tasty so we've done the root the fit now the root and the fifth are obvious because the root and the fifth are the two strongest resolving notes they're the most obvious ones so when we play the pentatonic scale the thing that we're missing in the pentatonic scale is the third because the third is the crucial part of a chord that tells you whether it's a minor chord or a major chord and the chords that we're using in the blues are major they have a major third okay and again if you learn your chord construction which I can show you this will become more and more obvious but the simple thing here's one two three that's the bird so the bird an octave higher and you'll also find it here and but our pentatonic scale doesn't want us to do that it's there okay and here so this is a really really crucial part that blues because one of the key things about the blues is the interaction between the minor third and the major third and this is we could do a whole lesson on this one thing but today I'm just talking about chord tones and the first position and I want to kind of involve it in the whole general thing about what we're talking about so so let's have a look at it though play that I'm going to play that chord again that's how one chord and now I'm going to play the minor third on its own really really flat like no no embellishment [Music] so much played a really flat [Music] if we just hear that no you just can't imagine that note being important can you on its own it just sounds so what's going on there it's why is this known so important if you look at my little diagram that I did you'll see that in brackets next to the minor third I put in brackets major third now that major third is a bright color yeah you can see I've done the minor third in gray my I've made it gray because I want you to see it's not a resolving point okay the bright colors are where the resolving points are and then one of the resolving points are the major third the major third is a resolving point because it's a chord tone we just said and not only is a chord tone but it's the most important chord tone because it's the court that tells us where the chord is major or minor the major third is like a really strong important chord in that run note in that chord or strong interval in that court so I want to now go okay so we've now got something really interesting going on because we can go from something that sounds off to something that sounds really on really good so in other words minor third in the pentatonic sounds out but the major third which is outside of our pentatonic scale sounds in it works it's a resolving note so let me show you if I just play the major third which isn't in a pentatonic scale so remember this isn't in a pentatonic scale but we need to know it's there okay so we're just adding in as flavor because it's such an important note that works works major third it's not in a pentatonic scale it's not in the blue scale but it's absolutely critical to what we're going to be doing now one of me one of the lovely little things you can do in the in the pentatonic scale or the blue scale to make it sound bluesy is to just do what they call a curl on the minor third what that curl is doing is it's taking our ear to that major third sometimes it doesn't even get there it's not a full band but it's taking us to this resolution from a court from a note which really doesn't sound resolved at all so let me give you an idea [Music] [Applause] [Music] take you to say yeah [Music] and in this case I'm rolling it up and resolving there but if I wanted to I could go back to come resolving it to the root but if I warned up kind of just keep it hanging [Music] and that then leads us naturally to holding it to a full Bend all my sounds like country [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] but it sounds cooler [Music] [Applause] so here we'll resolve into the room but we're putting a bit the curl so I want you to practice hitting the minor third in that diagram but curling it a bit to that minor third to the major third so you go so how about this if you're right at the beginning point of your journey do this route but whenever you hit the third the minor third so [Music] so it sounds [Music] Thanks [Music] don't want to stay on the phone because the falls bitten poop so we want to fall off it Cal [Music] okay so there are a ton of so we think we've kind of covered their route we've covered minor third with a bit of men we've met we've talked about the fourth which is a bit of a kind of move away from it but it's as long as you don't land on it and it's really really really important that you know that that note is one that you don't land on but but what happens is is your ears take over and you you naturally start to move away from resolving to that fourth but if you know it's a fourth and you know it's the one that you keep away from it helps you construct licks and phrases for the future okay helps you understand why so fit and now - seven the - seven it's just part of the chord scallion chord tones so we've got the minor - seven it's part of the chord because a that the seventh chord that we're starting from that it's called a a7 the - 7 is another chord tone okay so it's a really important note again because it's a chord tone so let's play again that - seven is there and it's here but again it sounds sweet [Music] and what's nice about it is it doesn't resolve as as obviously as a rude myth but it traits flavor so so you might go you might resort to route and then follow it up with a written resolution to the seventh so it works isn't it [Music] hi I'm so sorry it seems as though my technical expertise has let me down once again the bright light shining onto the whiteboard was putting me out of focus throughout the video I couldn't talk too busy talking to you so yeah look so so look we're getting that I'm really sorry if you now feel seasick from looking at a blurred blurred video for the whole time and I and my memory card has run out so I'm absolutely messed this all up so hey look we lit together I told you I'd make a prat on myself so how they knew that helped at all because clearly we can we can carry on in the next video I can't do it all over again but I'll make a better one I'll improve you see I'll start off a bit rubbish and I'll get better so what we'll do in the next video is for certain will look a little bit at the the flat 5 the Blues note and the key development next time we'll be looking at the chord change so as we go from the one chord to the four chord how our notes now sound against relative to the new chord that we're playing and wide the notes within the pentatonic scale continue to sound good over that chord okay so it'll be really interesting and I'm hoping it will just give you a new entry and you kind of angle an understanding of the Blues because it's great fun and it can be done at any level I think that's the wonderful thing about the Blues is that it doesn't matter whether you're a complete beginner or more advanced as for you you know anybody can play the blues and therefore hopefully this might even inspire a few people to start playing blues thinking that always can't do that but maybe if you sort of watch the videos and you start to sort of build up from your level you'll find that you can play the blues and have loads of fun with it okay I'm really sorry please don't thumb down the video because all the blurriness I'm not a youtuber you know I use YouTube to talk to you guys but I'm not an expert with YouTube and I'm not a I don't have an editor it's just done between all my other work so yeah I was looking forward to doing this I'm glad I've done it and but I'm really sorry for the video the blurring it's a complete nightmare anyway I'll see you next time and we'll take from there please put in the comments below how you feel any gaps that need addressing if you want me to start with the regular major scale if you want me to do a video on cord construction we can do all of it anywhere that you feel there's a problem I'll help okay all right thanks guys stay well and safe and all that kind of stuff and I'll see you soon okay cheers bye

Channel: Richards Guitars

Views: 209,502

Rating: 4.9059525 out of 5

Keywords: blues guitar, blues guitar tuition, understanding blues guitar, guitar tuition, blues guitar lesson, blues guitar basics, blues guitar lessons for intermediate, blues guitar tutorial, blues guitar solo lesson, blues guitar instrumental, blues guitar scales, blues guitar licks, guitar tuition for beginners, guitar tuition youtube, guitar tuition online, blues guitar lessons for beginners, blues guitar tuition youtube, blues guitar solo basics, keith wyatt blues guitar basics

Id: R7yHl_JCcVw

Length: 32min 48sec (1968 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/EmilyNancy]

Long time lurker, first time poster in this subreddit! Hello!

I came across this Richard chap on YouTube after trying to various videos on blues music theory - and this was the first one that clicked and didn't just give me copycat licks. Excuse his blurry cam, he gets it under control in the later videos. :)