Jon Chappell - Blues Guitar For Dummies

High and low, up and down: When I say “higher on the neck” or “up the neck,” I refer to the higher-numbered frets, or the region closer to the body of the guitar than the headstock. “Going up” always refers to going up in pitch, which means toward the higher frets or skinnier strings — which happen to be closer to the floor than the ceiling.

One staff at a time, please: Many of the exercises contain both music notation and tablature. The tab tells you what frets and strings to play; the music tells you the pitches and the rhythms. These ways present the same information in different ways, so you need to look at only one at a time. Pick the one that works best for you.

Occasionally, you will come across some boxes of text that are shaded gray (also called sidebars). You have my permission to skip over this info. Don’t get me wrong; the info is fun and interesting, but it’s not the most crucial points of blues guitar.

In this book I make the following assumptions about you:

You’re an average reader who knows a little something about the guitar or the blues.

You want to sound like a blues player and take the path that allows you to discover many things about the guitar and music.

You want to play quickly without a lot of messing around with music theory and all that stuff. You want exactly what you need to know at that moment in time without all the lectures and teacherly instincts.

I’ve organized the book into seven sections that deal with holding, setting up, and playing the guitar, and then I tackle how to buy a guitar, what to look for in an amp, how effects work, and the major contributors to the blues.

Part 1devotes three chapters to the guitar basics that you need to know before you can start playing the blues. Chapter 1helps you understand blues guitar, the kinds of guitars available, the gear you may need, and the parts of the guitar. In Chapter 2, you discover how the guitar works and the art of fretting. Chapter 3explains how to hold your guitar, position your right and left hands, how to tune up (which is oh, so important), and how to interpret the written notation throughout the book.

The chapters in Part 2all deal with playing the guitar (hooray!) and creating music. Chapter 4presents chords — the easiest way to start playing real music. In Chapter 5, you strike the strings through different strumming patterns, rhythms, and fingerpicking techniques. The overview in Chapter 6shows how blues songs are structured, and Chapter 7has you playing real blues music!

Part 3takes you into the world of the committed guitar student. In Chapter 8, you explore lead guitar, and Chapter 9takes you into the expressive world of melodic playing. Chapter 10puts the finishing touches on your lead playing with certain expressive guitar techniques.

In Part 4of this book, you find the style chapters, where you get to play blues in all the different styles throughout the blues’ colorful history. You discover the acoustic-based blues from the Mississippi Delta ( Chapter 11), history of traditional electric blues ( Chapter 12), and the electric blues’ rowdy alter ego, blues rock ( Chapter 13).

In Part 5, you scope out the gear you need to complete your blues rig. Chapter 14is a handy guitar buyer’s guide that covers everything from evaluating a guitar to shopping strategies to dealing with the music store salespeople. Chapter 15, on amps and their effects, gives you a primer on guitar amps and those little magic boxes (effects) that give your guitar some superhip sounds. In Chapter 16, you find out how to change strings on both acoustic and electric guitars.

The Part of Tens provides fun and interesting information in a top-ten-style format that rivals those late night talk show hosts’. The chapters in this part prioritize important information by the many blues guitarists and recordings.

The appendixes cover important info not contained in the chapters. Appendix Aexplains reading music, and Appendix Bprovides an overview of the audio tracks you’ll find on the website at www.dummies.com/go/bluesguitarfd .

In the margins of this book, you find several helpful little icons that make your journey a little easier:

The remember icon signifies a piece or pieces of information worth remembering. Sounds simple, huh? Some of the info comes up repeatedly.

In the instances that I get all techy on you, I use this icon to mark the explanations that you can skip and come back to later if you want.

This icon highlights info for die-hard blues guitarists (and those in the making). To step up your blues abilities, take the advice in these icons.

This icon is a hands-on, explicit directive that can change your playing from merely extraordinary to really extraordinary.

Pay heed to this one, or you could do damage to something — your ears, your guitar, your audience’s ears, and so on.

Blues Guitar For Dummies can be read straight through like a novel or by individual chapter. Even though each chapter is self-contained, music instruction dictates that certain steps be mastered before others, so Parts 2and 3are best experienced in order.

If you’re a beginner, a musical klutz, or someone who really wants to follow the steps, start with Chapter 1and read the book in sequence. If you already play a little bit, skip to Chapter 3, where I decipher the notation used in the music figures in the book. Then you’re ready for the playing chapters — Chapters 4through 13. You don’t need to master the E chord in Chapter 3to appreciate the advice on buying a guitar in Chapter 14. But at some point, I hope you read all the material in this book, even the most obscure trivia.

Part 1

IN THIS PART …

“Woke up this mornin’ and I feel like playin’ the blues.” Well, you don’t have to just sing about it; you can dig right in and start doing something about it! The information in this part gets you thinking like a blues guitar player. Chapter 1outlines what’s contained in the book and spells out what you need to do from buying a guitar to playing it to maintaining it. In Chapter 2, you jump into the mechanics of what makes guitars tick — their method of sound production and how the various gizmos and other hardware operate. Get ready to assume the position in Chapter 3— the playing position, that is. You hold the guitar in a sitting and standing position, place your hands correctly, and figure out how to tune up. You see how the notation for the music figures works, and hey, you even get to strum a chord!