If you’re looking to learn acoustic blues guitar, then perhaps you’ve been inspired by contemporary blues artists such as Gary Clark Jr., Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’, or Bonnie Raitt. Even for artists who fall into the rock category (Elvis, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton and Cream, White Stripes, Black Keys), their style is still heavily influenced by the great acoustic blues guitarists of the past century. When learning acoustic blues guitar, it’s important to learn the traditional techniques that these contemporary artists employ, such as finger-picking and slides, as well as the history of where the genre originated.
The bottleneck, or slide, style of guitar comes closest to conveying the emotion of the human voice. —@Berklee instructor Dan Bowden on #BluesGuitar Click To TweetWhat is Blues and Where Did it Originate?
Blues is a word that describes a distinctive form of musical output, developed by African Americans that lived primarily in the South. Blues was conceived in the cotton fields, from field hollers and work songs that expressed the hardships of an oppressed and exploited African American underclass. The musical elements of blues are distinctly African in origin—the pentatonic scales, polyrhythms, use of microtones and pitch bends, and call-and-response phrase structure all originate from the African continent. The first strains of what we would identify as blues were identified around the turn of the century, around the same time recording technology was developed.
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From its beginnings, fingerstyle acoustic blues guitar has been anchored by a driving bass, provided by the thumb of the picking hand. Most acoustic blues guitarists use a thumb pick to play the root of the chord, driving the rhythm of the bass line, which takes the place of percussion. The reason for this is traditional acoustic blues guitar players operated as a one-person band, providing the groove for dancing all night long in juke joints, at parties, and at Saturday night fish fries.
Alternating bass, which is fundamental to the acoustic blues guitar style, is the next level of complexity you’ll encounter. Playing an alternating bass means that rather than solely driving the root of a chord on a single string, the alternate bass will have a secondary bass note, usually the root in a higher octave or the 5th of the chord. All bass notes are to be picked with the thumb.
“Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotten (Nevills) is an important song in the acoustic blues repertoire. It’s been covered by countless artists like Peter, Paul & Mary and the Grateful Dead. It offers a great opportunity to develop the alternating-bass technique.
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You may be approaching acoustic blues soloing with an electric blues background and orientation. Be mindful of a few basic concepts that will help you to channel your electric blues playing into a more acoustic blues sound. Let’s look at some devices that will help you improve your acoustic blues guitar soloing:
Being that acoustic guitars typically have heavier string gauges and tension than electrics, it’s more difficult to push the string up into a half-step or whole-step bend. Use small string bends around a quarter step, especially on the b3 scale tones, for a more acoustic blues sound.
On electric guitar, it feels comfortable and sounds great to play the entire solo up on the fretboard. On acoustic, it sounds more bluesy to use and play off open strings.
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It’s useful to arrange pentatonic scales diagonally on the fretboard so that as the notes ascend in pitch, you are moving up the neck and as the notes descend in pitch, you are then moving down the neck towards the open strings. These are especially advantageous for acoustic blues.
The bottleneck, or slide, style of guitar comes closest to conveying the emotion of the human voice. Using an object to glide up and down a string, as opposed to fretting, allows for phrasing and nuance like that of a singer.
To play this style, you’ll need to purchase a slide. A slide is a glass or metal tube you put over your fret finger to glide up and down the fretboard. You can also, quite literally, use a bottleneck to produce this sound, but it’s not always as precise. You’ll also want to use an acoustic guitar with light gauge and action set for normal playability. This will have sufficient string tension for playing. Phosphor-bronze strings provide an ideal tone for slide guitar on acoustics and especially on resonator guitars such as Nationals.
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Next, try tuning your guitar to open G “Spanish” tuning. The tuning was called “Spanish” by blues musicians in the South because of its association with the song “Spanish Fandango.” Three strings need to be adjusted with decreased tension to go to open G “Spanish” tuning from standard tuning:
The song “Death Letter” by Son House is vocally, musically, and lyrically one the most powerful blues tracks ever recorded, and uses a slide in open G tuning. A testament to the endurance of this song, check out the White Stripes (more electrified) version, from nearly 50 years after the original.
In the 12-week course, you’ll do a deep dive into these concepts, including the origins and characteristics of blues, and the important works by blues artists throughout the decades. You’ll also get a comprehensive overview of how to fingerpick melodies and solos over independent bass patterns, perform in the acoustic bottleneck slide style in standard and open tunings, and develop a varied repertoire of acoustic blues that includes historic as well as contemporary examples.“Right on Beale Street there, I bought my Stella. Paid $11 for it. It was hangin’ in a window. Played it ’til it wore out.”
Today I Recorded My Fingerstyle Jazzblues Exercice In A Nr. 25, Links To Pdf Score/tab And Scrollingscore Under Video, Intermediate Level
Joe Callicott was talking to blues historian Gayle Dean Wardlow about the instrument he used at the Memphis sessions of 1929 and ’30, where Callicott and his partner, Garfield Akers, made their brief but beautiful contribution to the history of recorded blues. Cheap guitars came up again in Wardlow’s conversations with H.C. Speir, the Jackson, Mississippi, music store owner who scouted a roster of early blues recording talent that included Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James, and Son House. When asked what they played, Speir also mentioned the Stella brand—specifically a model he sold for $9.95—as the instrument of choice “across the board.”
The sound of bluesmen on a budget remains an aesthetic legacy to the present day. Stellas from the 1920s now have four-figure price tags, and players shop for guitars, both vintage and new, that deliver a stiff, crunchy low end, strong midrange, and sustained highs—the tone associated with roots pioneers who, ironically, might have played Martins if they could have afforded them. “Good for blues”—like the currently common “parlor, ” “Piedmont, ” or “lap-style”—is a fabulously non-descriptive term when applied to a guitar. That said, here are a few notes that may be useful whether you’re looking for a MYSLAD (Makes You Sound Like a Dead Guy) instrument or not.
In the early 20th century, as steel strings came into common use and manufacturers began mass-producing inexpensive guitars, it became important to design durable products that could be made cheaply. As the name implies, ladder-braced instruments forgo the more complex X and fan patterns used on the soundboards of costlier steel-strings. In their place are heavy transverse struts—usually four—above and below the soundhole and on either side of an enlarged bridge patch.
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Although roughly finished inside, some early examples are fancy on the outside, heavily appointed with bindings, decals, and stamped-out inlay work. But Plain Jane is generally the rule. Some of these guitars are petite, barely larger than a baritone uke; others, like the fabled long-scale Stella 12-strings, are massive. Many, like the Kalamazoo brand made by Gibson, were crafted to resemble their pricier counterparts.
The sound of such guitars is generally less complex than that of the X-braced equivalent, but ladder-braced examples tend to be loud for their size, and their mid-to-high register is bright with a long decay rate—good for blues. A combination of hide glue, hard use, and history makes older guitars of this type—Washburn, Regal, Stella, etc.—in original playing condition a rare find. Their increasing value, however, has made some well worth restoring. Additionally, the designs have been adapted and improved by builders like Todd Cambio, with his Stella-inspired Fraulini models, and high-end manufacturers such as Collings, whose Waterloo line includes a variety of ladder-braced guitars.
Four decades after that 1929 Memphis session, Joe Callicott clearly remembered the lexicon of now-legendary artists who were at the studio in the Peabody Hotel that day. Among these were Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe, ready to score a major hit with their “Bumble Bee Blues.” Notable in Callicott’s recall were their instruments: A gleaming pair of brand-new National Style 1 tricone resonators—the first guitars of this type that anybody around Memphis had ever seen or heard.
Alvarez Jazz & Blues Blues51we/tsb [2018] Acoustic Guitar
At the time, National guitars had been available for barely a year. The sound of the resonator, now so widely linked to early blues, was absent from the original recordings of blues guitar pioneers such as Blind Blake, Lemon Jefferson, and Lonnie Johnson, who recorded well before that. Even
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