Learn blues guitar the right way by focussing on articulation. Let’s face facts. The electric guitar is probably the most expressive instrument of them all. Even though I’m probably a bit biased here, I’m sure you’d agree? I’m not even talking about changing the tone of the instrument through effects either, I’m talking about articulation.
The reason the guitar is so versatile is because you can really emulate the human voice to a great degree through effective use of articulation. Think of a piano for example. Awesome instrument but there aren’t many different ways in which you could sound one note. Sure you could use grace notes but you don’t nearly have as many options as you do to sound an individual note as you can on the guitar.
What I’m referring to here is the different kinds of articulations namely hammer ons and pull offs which are also known as Slurs, Bends, Slides and Vibrato. These are all different ways in which you can generate sounds on the guitar and each one of those have a seemingly infinite array of options available as well. So if you want to learn blues guitar properly make sure you learn these techniques.
Let’s look at slurs and bends for a moment. Basically how it works is that you sound a note using your pick or finger and then you can “hammer on” or “pull off” to the following note and the result is a real smooth transition into the following note because you don’t have the initial, high velocity, sound of the picked note yet you can hear it clearly and distinctively. You can hammer on or pull off to notes in a variety of ways, ranging from slow to fast, you can repeat it numerous times or you can even hammer on or pull of to consecutive notes or any combination of the above. Loads of options and that’s just the slurs.
The way bends can be executed is just plain phenomenal and this also happens to be the one technique that when developed well enough will give you a distinctly unique sound. I can tell all my favorite guitarists apart just from listening to them bend into a note. What you do is after you picked a note you literally bend steel with your bare hands, (Awesome!!) and the result is a change in pitch. In western music the smallest interval is that of a semitone. Think of a piano going from a white note to a black note. That’s a semitone. One the guitar on the other hand one fret to the following fret is also just a semitone but when you bend notes you can get into microtonal bends which is fantastic.
The most common might be a quarter tone bend which some people refer to as a curl. Think of blues music where you play the minor third over a dominant chord (which contains a major third) and to avoid sounding like a total loser you just slightly bend that note a bit sharp to hint at the major third. Seemingly simple but this adds attitude to your playing like you won’t believe it. Bends also have have their own character. You can have your bends ranging from aggressive to soulful and everything in between. The most important thing you’d need to keep in mind though is you tuning. In the same way as we don’t like listening to out of tune singers (remember we’re emulating the human voice here) we don’t like out of tune bends. So make sure they’re in tune.
There are loads of different ways in which you can practice bending. Visit this page to check out 2 videos that deals with string bending. Good luck and have fun as you learn blues guitar!
