Hey guys! It’s Will Kriski here. Today, we’re going to be talking about a blues progression playing the rhythm guitar.
Now, in a certain key like the key of E, we’re going to use the 1st, 4th, and 5th chord of the key. So the key of E, that’s E, A, and B. So you get your E chord, your A chord, and your B. What we’re going to do is a little bit of a modification, and then I’ll show you that. There’s some tab on the lesson.
The first chord in the progression, you play I guess open string. I call this the low E, the sixth string. This is higher, the first string. So you play a low E string and you put your finger on the second fret, play these two together. And the rhythm is [Demonstration]. That’s a shuffle rhythm. The second eight note is—it’s like two eight notes but the second one is delayed, it’s like a triplet. You tie the first two notes of the triplet together and you play the third note. So instead of going [Demonstration], you go [Demonstration].
The second chord, which is the A, you play the A string, the 5th string open and your 2nd fret on the 4th string. You play those together, and back to the E.
And the final chord, the 5th chord of the scale, the 1-4-5, you got your B. First finger on the 2nd fret, 5th string, that’s your B, and two frets up, one string down is your F#. That’s a B power chord. So we put the whole thing together and I’ve got the chord progression shown in my—in the tab there.
[Demonstration]
And then we’re back to the beginning.
So with the last chord, the B, that leads us back to the E. It’s called the turnaround. It’s just an unresolved chord that wants to go back to the beginning, so the blues can just loop around and around indefinitely as long as you want. That’s what’s great about it.
You’ll also notice that sometimes I’m doing some palm muting with this right hand. I’ve got a video on that but if you lay your hand—the side of your hand here against the bridge just where the strings come out, you can sort of mute the strings. If you play the strings without muting, notice that they ring. So sometimes, I lay my fingers after I play the chord back, touch the strings to mute them. Or lay my hand on the strings or my palm on the side and mute the strings as well, so you want to get that short sound. So I’m laying my fingers down here, just over the top of the strings. Or I can play it like this and I just rest my pick back with my thumb. That cuts off the sound as well.
So there you go, that’s the basic blues. Use that for your rhythm playing and we’ll also enhance that as we go along.
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