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Writer's pictureNate Savage

Want to Play the Blues? Start Here!



There are certain things you just have to have down if you want to be good at improvising blues solos. In this video, we will talk about the number one thing you need to have down if you want to be a blues hound.


The most important thing you need to have down like the back of your hand is the standard 12-bar blues progression. If you can’t hear the entire progression in your head and play it in your sleep, then you are going to have a much harder time getting through solos and expressing yourself than you should.


So how do you know if you have the standard 12-bar blues progression down? There is a simple test. Just play through the progression and see if you get lost at any point. If you don’t get lost, that’s great! If you get lost, you need to put in some time memorizing and internalizing the 12-bar blues progression.

To help you with this, we have some resources from the Blues Hound course for you. Download or print out the pdf of the progression and listen to the mp3 jam track over and over again. Once you can hear it in your head with no help, you will be good to go. This will make it much easier to concentrate on what you want to say with your blues solos.


Of course, the standard 12-bar blues progression isn’t the only blues progression you will encounter, but it is the foundation for many of the progressions you need to know. Get this one in your head, and it will set you up for success with the Blues Hound course or any other blues song you want to learn or solo over.


Nate




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2 Comments


Darrel
Apr 14, 2023
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Is this a picking thing or strumming thing? And if your using bar cord, what's with the 7 on the sheet? if it's a picking thing what strings are you picking ... I can't tell.

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Unknown member
Apr 27, 2023
Replying to

Hey @Darrel It doesn't really matter if you play a blues riff, strum open chords, or use bar chord. The important thing for this lesson is to memorize the 12-bar blues progression. You can use easy open chords. The 7s are just dominant 7th chords. Some of those are covered in the first module of the blues hound course that's free for everyone.

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