Understanding blues - Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom Forums

Thank you for sharing! After I graduated from Berklee, I decided not to listen jazz anymore. Because I really felt that I didn't have enough blue in me.

1) First, you need to inject BLUES in you. In order to do this, you need to pick a few albums that you like in blues music. For example, listen BB King "Live at the Regal" "Blues is King" Maybe Earl Hooker "Two Bugs and A Roach" This way you hear blues naturally.

2) Be familiar with chords. A) Practice Blues Shuffle Bass Line (I just post this topic on my YouTube Channel) foe review. Practice simple one first. 1111 4411 5411 ,,, Practice this over and over! b) Practice R 3 7 Swing Groove. This one, 1411 4411 5415 in Bb Blues or F blues or A Blues, E Blues etc. This way you can't get lost in blues chord progressions.

3) Start picking up simple blues phrase from old blues records. Any blues melodies or good blues phrases. Do not make your own phrase yet. Do more research on blues phrases from any old blues records. Cool songs? Freddie King "Hideaway" Even Eric Clapton cover this song with Blues Breakers.

No need to do anything hard at all. One at a time. So simple blues phrase with less strings. This mean, learn a simple phrase on one string approach so that clearly you can hear what intervals you are hearing instead of shapes.

Hope my suggestion will help.

Thank you for this topic!

Tomo

1 Like

Lyle3123

12 months ago

Thank you so much for replying! On top of that, I'm wondering whats the goal of first couple of lessons of Blues section. Like we learned several 7th chords and different inversions, how can we apply them? Just for back track? Is that has any connection with learning riffs?

Most importantly, what do you suggest in learning riffs rather than simply copy them? eg: I know how to play them but I cannot think of how to put them into my own phrase.

Thanks Tomo!!

1 Like

Tomo Fujita Mod

12 months ago

You're very welcome! Great question! Be familiar with blues chord progression really well. That's why you don't want to use any backing tracks to jam with. Learn a few blues chord progressions really deeply! So you need to work on a) Bassline b) R 3 7 swing groove (keep in time, how to use a metronome & work on your left hand muting technique) c) Triad inversion on blues chord progression. (Do Bb blues, learn triad inversions on top 123 set strings)

These will keep you very busy for a several months.

You want to learn a few melody before you learn any phrasing. Learn C Jam Blues & Bag's groove. Then learn a few simple phrasing in blues. Maybe some melody from old blues song. Try to learn simple melody/phrase so learn each phrase on ONE STRING approach. This way your phrase is not too wide intervals. Great melody is always within one octave.

In order to not make your own phrase yet so everything you learn from what you heard before. These items are could be some melodies from vocal phrases or BB King's any solos, Freddie King's Hideaway? Something like that. Learn blues phrase, blues language!

Hope these will help you.

Thank you.

Tomo