For just about anyone, you can learn how to play blues guitar in the same fashion as learning how to play any other type of guitar. The primary difference is in the feel while strumming, and the note choice of the scales. Once you have those 3 things down, it all boils down to of patience and practice. In most rock and popular tunes, eighth notes break each beat into two equal pieces. This division create the familiar one & two & three & four &" feel that we're used to in popular tunes. On the other hand, blues guitar uses a swing feel, where each beat is divided into three pieces. Instead of one & two &," we get one & a two & a three & a four & a." Dividing the beats into three pieces creates what are called eighth note triplets. Because there are usually four beats per measure in the blues, you are usually playing four groups of three. When starting out with learning blues guitar, you should practice strumming an easy chord like G7, which stands for G dominant 7, with a swing feel. You should practice strumming down on the strong beats, those that fall on the one, two, three, or four, skip the '&,' and strum up again on the 'a.' With that rhythm you get the do DAH do DAH do DAH do DAH sound made famous by artists such as Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Albert King. Another big part of learning how to play blues guitar is learning how to play a dominant seventh type of chord. Every chord is made of two elements, and blues guitar chords are the same way. If you have an A7 chord, there are two things that name tells you, you know that the chord is built on an A note, and you know it is a dominant seventh type of chord. Dominant seventh chords use the root, third, fifth, and flatted seventh of the major scale. It is that blending together of the major third and minor seventh notes that give dominant seventh chords their unique flavor. In most forms of music, only the chord built from the fifth note is permitted to be a dominant seventh chord. In blues, all of the chords are dominant seventh. The last thing about blues guitar is the use of the blues scale. From a major scale, take the root, flatted third, fourth, flatted fifth, fifth, and flatted seventh tone and you have a minor blues scale. For a major blues scale, you take the root, second, flatted third, third, fifth, and sixth notes from a major scale. What really makes these scales sound 'bluesy' is the way they contain a flatted third, but are played against dominant seventh chords which have a major third. This usage is one of the more prevalent characteristics of blues music. It is also a major component of a lot of blues-based rock and popular music. When learning how to play blues guitar, remember the words of the great BB King, The blues is the easiest music to learn, and the hardest to master." As in many facets of life, the blues is taking small ideas and constructing them together in such a way that they make something great.
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