Blue Jean Blues is one of the coolest slow blues progressions you're going to find. Especially when you throw in the riffs and bass lines you'll learn today to help push each chord change to the next one.
Comments and questions are welcome below!
One of the most common rhythms you'll find in the blues is what's known as a Texas Shuffle. Stevie Ray Vaughan had a crazy-good Texas Shuffle, and in this lesson we'll look at a real stripped-down version of Pride 'n Joy, which uses the shuffle.
This rhythm is a great starting point - get this foundation down pat, and we can build on it and do lots more cool things soon after. For today, we'll be playing double stops (which is simply two notes played at the same time), on the I and the V notes of the chords in our progression. Then, to make things a little bit more interesting, we'll add in a major 6th to give it some extra character.
In this lesson, we're going to build on the last lesson and add the minor 7th into the mix. That takes an extra finger, and it might be a little bit of a stretching exercise, but it sounds really cool, and you'll hear this trick used in a lot of blues music too. Let me know your thoughts below!
This lesson is inspired by John Fogerty's "Up Around The Bend," and we're using it as an example of triads, which can be used to create great sounding rhythm riffs or intro riffs.
In this lesson we'll use a Johnny Winter style blues riff in the context of a 12 bar blues in G. Once you get the boogie woogie rhythm going on, tossing that riff in really cranks things up a notch!
Rhythm isn't only about playing chords, in fact, it is very common to use rhythm riffs as the background rhythm section for songs too! In this lesson, we'll look at how you can use the pentatonic minor scale to play a fun rhythm riff in the context of a 12 bar blues.