subject: Beginning Blues Guitar – 8 Tips On Becoming a Blues Guitar Player [print this page] Beginning Blues Guitar 8 Tips On Becoming a Blues Guitar Player
Becoming a good blues guitar player is not an easy deal. Start with listening to your favorite blues guitarist and steal some licks. The blues scales are generally based on minor and pentatonic scales. If you want to discover the real blues you'll have to work on your finger picking techniques. Here are a few tips when just beginning blues guitar.
1) Play By Ear - Most of the legends like B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and many more, learned to play by ear. So you should also start by learning to play by ear. Play some music on your cd player and follow over the licks till the time you learn them. Once you play it by your ear, you certainly own it.
2) Play Behind The Beat - Start with listening to your favorite Blues guitar players. You will find that in most of the blues and jazz songs the guitar player plays off the drums. He waits for a fraction of a second to hear the beat and then plays the next beat on the upbeat.
3) Play With Dynamics - Learn to play with dynamics. Try and keep the differences in volume, timing, feel, attack color etc. Feel that the notes are expensive and try to spend them wisely.
4) Protect The Beats - Remember music is about timing and getting everything in rhythm. Being a blues guitar player you have to follow the beat and protect the rhythm. To protect the groove you have to have a beat in between a beat.
5) Try To Swing - A swing makes the tune complete. Learn to swing the right way. To become perfect you just have to give the correct rhythm, and have the right swing for the song.
6) Learn To Swagger - Listen to Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page or Slash and you will come to know why you need to learn to swagger for becoming the hottest guitarist. Play guitar for sometime like the biggest, meanest, funkiest blues guitar player that ever played.
7) Practice Fingerpicking - You have to fly off your fingers into people's heart to become the best blues guitarist player among all. Listen to some legends and you will feel that your fingers are killing you.
8) Find The Course Or Teacher - Search for teacher who has a clear, concise and focused teaching style, which can be accessed by all blues guitar players. A perfect video guitar course can help you enhance the finger picking techniques in an easy way.
