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Acoustic Drills And Exercises
In this lesson, we’re going to take a look at a few ways you can improve your acoustic guitar technique. We’ll go through some drills and exercises that you can use daily that will help you play faster, cleaner, and better. We’ll be looking at exercises that will benefit both the picking hand and the…
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“Hoochie Coochie Man” by Muddy Waters
“Hoochie Coochie Man” is a song written by Willie Dixon and was first recorded by Muddy Waters in 1954. This song is performed at about 108 beats per minute. We’ll be learning it in the key of A. It’s in 12/8 time, which is like 4/4 time, but with a swing. It still has 4…
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“Bad Feelin’ Blues” by Ry Cooder (For Slide Acoustic)
Here’s a great little song to play on the acoustic with a slide. It’s in open D tuning. Watch the video directly below to learn how to tune to open D, then you’ll be ready to learn the song in the next video: Once you’re tuned to open D you’re ready There’s a…
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Playing Slide On Acoustic
It’s common to use an open tuning to play slide guitar. This allows us to tune so that when we play all the strings open it sounds as a chord. For example, let’s take the open D tuning. Once we’re tuned to open D, a D chord will sound when we play the strings open,…
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Jam Tracks
Practice improvising the blues with these backing tracks. These songs only include the drums, bass, and backing guitar. You provide the lead! TO DOWNLOAD THESE FILES: 1. Hover your mouse pointer over the link. 2. Right-click the link. 3. Choose “Save Link As” 4. You’ll then be prompted to save it. Song Jams: Hoochie Coochie…
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Blues Box Practice Sessions
Working on this page! Beginner Box Practice Session 1
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12 Bare Blues Primer
The vast majority of contemporary blues music is based on what is termed a 12-bar format. That is, the main body of a song follows a set pattern of chords over 12 bars of music that is repeated over and over. Some songs may have several different patterns to give them a bit of variety, but the guts…
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Finding The Key Signature
A Key Signature tells us what originating tone a song is to be performed in. There are 12 tones of equal value. Imagine tones as blocks: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 The distance between each tone is called a half-step interval. Since there are 12 tones in music, there are…
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The Blues Turnaround
The basic turnaround I’m about to show you is a universal generic turnaround and can be applied to many situations. It’s perfect for the beginner, but once you play it a few times you’ll want to add or modify it some to personalize it a little more. When I say it’s generic, I really mean…
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Locating Every The D Note On The Fretboard
Here is a fun and educational exercise. We’ll locate all of the D notes on our guitar and practice playing them. The D notes on each string come out like this: E String – 10th Fret A String – 5th Fret D String – Open G String – 7th Fret B String – 3rd Fret High E…