Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles
Larry Sandberg
Language: English
Pages: 76
ISBN: 0415971756
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles is an introduction to fingerstyle acoustic blues guitar, the style made popular by Robert Johnson, Bill Broonzy, and Mance Lipscomb. Following the success of the popular Acoustic Guitar Styles, Larry Sandberg’s Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles is an instructional book geared towards the intermediate guitar player, not only to teach fingerstyle blues technique, but also to approach the music creatively and with feeling and rhythm.
Part One teaches you the preliminaries, such as reading a chord chart and working out a 12-bar blues in different keys. Part Two teaches you touch, timing, and basic fingerpicking technique. Part Three teaches you how to play stylistically, with lessons on how to incorporate bends, vibrato, alternating bassnotes, and rhythmic variations into your playing. All musical exercises are presented in both standard notation and tablature, and are supported by audio tracks.
Customers purchasing the eBook version of this title will be able to download the supporting audio tracks. Instructions on downloading the files can be found on the contents page.
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10/16/06 4:12:50 PM Touch and Timing 33 Track 10. Blues with Thumping Bass F ur ther wor k 1. You can learn a new chord or a new song or a new lick overnight, but cultivating a touch takes weeks, months, or years. Gradually work towards developing your touch by listening to other guitarists, deciding what you like, getting their sound into your head, and then gradually figuring out what you need to get your body to do to get that sound. Developing a touch requires such delicate nuances
However, with the bar chord shape we’re using, the open D string is not available during the D7 chord, so we’ll just use the open A string during that chord as well. TEAM LinG RT756X.indb 35 10/16/06 4:12:54 PM 36 Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles L arry S andberg Track 11. Moving A round the A7 Shape F ur ther wor k . First get comfortable playing Track 11 accurately and in time. When you can do this, you’re ready to apply everything you’ve learned so far: • Play the 12-bar blues using
this strum automatically gives you the feeling of the chord change coming ahead of the beat, without having to think too hard—or think at all—about it. Track 27. Rhythm 8 (track 28 on CD has this rhythm with 12-bar blues) TEAM LinG RT756X.indb 43 10/16/06 4:13:09 PM 44 Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles L arry S andberg As you listen, you’ll notice that the bass note count is really three-and-a-half beats because the upstroke starts on the “and” following the fourth beat. As long as you
while, notice that the chord changes occur half a beat ahead of the bar line. It’s this quality that gives syncopation its forward thrust. L is t ening. Listen to your blues collection and try to feel which songs, styles, and individual artists take a syncopated approach. Some masters of syncopated up-down strumming are John Lee Hooker, Otis Taylor, and Josh White. (Listen for example, to Hooker’s This is Hip on Charlie, Taylor’s Below the Fold on Telarc, and White’s Free and Equal Blues on
35 Chord Chart Try playing around with these chord shapes, using different rhythms and touches. Try a steady bass, and then see whether you can find alternating bass patterns that sound good to you. Try doing this one chord at a time. Then go back and forth between any two chords of your choice (but choose chords that sound good together!). Finally, use these shapes in the 12-bar blues progression. Now we’re ready for Track 35. TEAM LinG RT756X.indb 55 10/16/06 4:13:30 PM 56 Acoustic