Want to play the blues? You Need to Do This!

do you want to transform your Blues playing in the next few minutes I'll show you some essential Blues turnarounds that'll really elevate your lead and Rhythm playing let's dive [Music] in we'll get right down to business with the basic anatomy of a blues turnround what it is and how it works and then we'll show you three simple ways that the greats do it make sure you stick around to the end because I'm going to show you a especially cool way to do a turnaround that seems to break all the rules but if you watch the video you'll understand why it really doesn't before we get into any details what is a blu's turn around well here's an example of [Music] one I'm sure you've heard that before now let's dig in here we have a standard 12 Bar Blues in a and you can see I've used all dominant seventh chords A7 D7 and E7 what we're talking about for the turnaround is really these last two measures here where we have the A7 leading to the E7 and then it turns back around that's where it gets its name to the top of the Blues and then we play it all over again the turn around part is just the last piece so really that turnaround piece is the A7 trying to get to the E7 chord now if we look at an A7 chord we see it's made up of a c e and g and an E7 chord is e g Shar B and D we see that there's only one note in common it's the e e is the fifth of a and it's the root of e so e is called a common tone it's found in both of the chords A7 and E7 but it's not enough just to know what it is we also need to know how to play it so let's take a look at some of the ways that the greats did it remember I've got that special one coming at the end so make sure you wait until the end for that one first we'll go over a method that was favored by Eric Clapton Sometimes the best ways are the simplest ways and this is a super simple way Eric favored this in the 60s when he played with John ma in the Blues Breakers it's very simple you're just playing the root of that five chord like this and then you play it an octave down too in this case I play an E right here on the B string and then I play an E right here on the a string now you can play it here too doesn't really matter let me put that in context so you can hear it and the turn around it's so simple and it's so perfect because it just matches exactly what the chord is being played and what the rest of the band is doing at that time so that's a great way of playing it here's one slight variation on Eric's method one thing that we can do to fill the gap between the between the octaves is to insert an a chord and just play down the a [Music] chord and then end it with an E7 because e is a common tone in both A7 and E7 we can do that sounds great so that's pretty simple but it only scratches the surface and much more common is the next method we'll look at which I call the walkup method the walkup method is also simp simple now remember what we're trying to do is get to that e which is a common tone with the A7 chord and the E7 chord so one way we could do that is to play three Frets below and walk up walk up the fretboard or up the notes till we get to that e like [Music] this I know you've heard that turnaround before but why three Frets below well here's the simple reasoning this happens to be a c sh that's a chord tone of a as we discussed so we go from one chord tone to the next chord tone up we get it and there are endless ways that we can make that idea fancier here are just a couple ideas one way I can make it sound a lot fancier is to add a petal note so in this case I'm going to add this a between every note of the walk up like this and I can do variations on that like this right so that's one way I can make it a lot fancier another way is I can change that ending instead of just playing an E7 chord I could play What's called an approach chord an approach chord is just the same shaped chord but I'm going to play it one fret or one half step below in this case I'll play an E flat 7 and I'll play the seven like this [Music] so that's called the walk up method but there's even a more common method and it's called the walk down method let's have a quick look at that so you probably guessed what it is it's starting three Frets above where you want to end up which again is that e in this case we'll start right here and walk down to that [Music] e now the interesting thing is why can we use this that happens to be a G note and that is in an A7 chord remember a C sharp E and G G is the flatted seventh so it gives it that nice spiciness that we expect from a seventh chord and that's why it's probably most common of course you can make it fancy as well by putting in the pedal [Music] tone and use an approach chord Works basically the same way up or down and there you go so now you know know why that version of the Robert Johnson turnaround or the zezy top Jesus Just Left Chicago [Music] turnaround why that works it's just the fancy version of the walkdown ah but I was going to show you that special turnaround that seems to defy the logic that we had let's take a quick look at that one sounds strange when I first heard this I heard from Robin Ford I didn't understand what was going on I thought there was some weird Theory like here's a strange A7 chord now here's a B minor 7 now here's an F7 what was that all about and then this now back to a but honestly there's no strange Theory required once you understand the anatomy of these turnarounds so on the D string we're just doing doing a walk down and on the B string we're doing a walk up right because that's an e and that's an e so we're doing them both in parallel that's it so cool but if you like learning this little trick you're going to love this one a trick that I learned from the late great Danny Gaton so go ahead and click on this I'll see you in that video and I'll see you on down the road

Channel: Mark Zabel

Views: 23,481

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Id: f47PxtgTsrg

Length: 7min 33sec (453 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2024