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Hi, and welcome to my third Open Tunings article. I was at a friend's house this week and he has a digital camera, so I decided to snap some shots and post them up so everybody could see what I look like, my personal favorite is me tasting my guitar strings, which consequencially taste quite a bit like, well, chicken. I've recieved lots of email from all of you canadian guitar players and it really is a treat to have this venue to connect with you all, i get such a kick out of it. Please keep 'em coming. Someone was asking me what sort of music i like to play, what do i have in my CD player right now. Well, lately it's been nothing but Eric Clapton Unplugged, or whatever i get from Napster (a fantastic music community program, if you've not already heard of it, get it now that you have: www.napster.com) is usually old Robert Johnston, Carl Weathersby, or Lonnie Shields, so i decided that I'd talk about the blues this month. What makes all those bluesmen great, what makes you wanna play that three chord song over and over again? Why have the blues lasted so long, even though the music itself is so uncomplicated and reasonably simple? Answer: Soul. Period. That's it, down and dirty Soul. You can't find any more soul in an army of Kool and The Gang's and George Clinton and The Parliment Funkadelics wrapped up in mojo bag. The bottom line, if ya ain't had the blues, ya can't play the blues. Blues can be boiled down to this pretty bare outline, but doesn't have to follow this, this is just a basic blues pattern. Take any chord, let's say E since it's a pretty popular chord for blues guitarists and singers since the blues are melancholy and depressing mostly, the E chord is the lowest sounding chord you can make. Now you'll start the song off singing a catchy phrase like, "I know this writer named Geoff,"; and now you're gonna look to change what chord your playing, so to follow suit in your blues format, you go up the scale five spots, so what i mean is since you started at E, go E to F(1step), F to F#(2steps), F# to G (3), G to G#(4), and G# to A(5), so A is the next chord that you go to, and you continue with your catchy phrase like,"He's the most awful writer I know"; now you wanna wrap it up, go to a chord that's gonna give the song a pre-conclusion, this chord is seven steps away from your first chord E, so what i mean is E, go E to F(1), F to F#(2), F# to G (3), G to G#(4), G# to A(5), A to A#(6) and A# to B(7), so B is your wrap it up or "change over chord" as it is also commonly called, and you sing some cool little ending, "He can't seem to write paragraphs"; then go back to you A chord to finish it off, "He's got the, writer's-block blues" and then big booming finish on the guitar with that E chord....and that is about it. The pattern can seem wordy but let me put it to you like this. The scale of notes goes E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# and repeats. Look at it a different way. Instead of notes, see them as roman numerals, numbers if you will. So now it's I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII, right. Now looking back on the basic blues pattern that we just did, E A and B it would look like this now: I V and VII. But i don't want to get you thinking that E is the only chord you can start with, so let's take G, but I going to apply the I V VII idea to this as well. If G is the first chord (I), then five steps away from that is C, so C is the second chord (V), the third chord is seven steps away, so that chord is D (VII); so a blues "formula" is I V VII, and if I've lost you at this piont please reread or email me. Now just to be confusing, the actual "technical" blues formula goes I IV V because when the formulas are written out, the sharps are not counted, you have to just know where and when a sharp comes up. So don't stone me over theory, even though I'm wrong, I'm kinda right, I just put things in a simpler way. See, what the I IV V means is this: E F G A B C D, and E equals I and F equals II so it's now I II III IV V VI VII, but once again you need to know where a VI actually means to play a F#m, or whatever. Just think of it like this: If notes were pencils, B's and E's wouldn't sharpen. If you can remember that, you'll do fine. Blues solos are another bag of mojo too. Some of the best solo guitar players can't play a lick of rythmn, but will beat you silly with 12 bar blues solos (B.B. King is a fine example of that). Take your solos seriously, but keep a few things in mind. This is the blues, not the olympics. If your gonna play 6000 note solos over a twelve bar blues pattern, you'd better be Steve Vai. Blues is not a race, some competition for overpowering the audience with maddening riffs and licks, so mind you manners. Keep it simple, make it melodic, and don't dare play the blues cute. Play what fits, find the groove of the song, and stick it in your pocket, try not to vary to far from that groove, or the rest of the band will lose you. You really can get away with alot playing the blues, i mean you can go right out of key, but if you zone in on that drummer and bass player and stick with them through your off key lick or riff, instead of you sounding like crap you can end up sounding innovative (George Thorogood dodges out of key tons of times when playing live but the guy is so damn good at what he does you would never ever know). One last thing, a quote that i read somewhere a while back, I think that it was Muddy Waters who said (regarding the guitar you play) "If it ain't been in a pawn shop, it can't play the blues." No real reason for that quote, just liked it and thought that it applied to this month. Take care everyone, and you'll hear from me very soon. PS-Hope you like the pictures!!
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