Jam Sessions - All Blues Styles

Lesson 11 - Blues In C

Lesson Sample

Lyle: Looks like it's time to jam! We're going to start off easy in this lesson. Here's your jam track for this 1 - 4 - 5 blues progression in C:

Jam Track - Blues in C


chord chart


Lyle: Try using a single coil pickup on your guitar and a clean tone for this rhythm riff. Add a little reverb for effect. Here are the chord voicings I suggest you try:

chords

chords


Lyle: You can play the blues on an acoustic, but bending strings can be tough!

Lyle: The C7 is easy to make, just 3 notes in the middle of the neck. For this rhythm riff, you want to hit each chord once on beat 2 of each measure and mute the chord right after you hit it.

Lyle: Try playing this rhythm riff using these three chord shapes:

rhyrhm riff


rhythm riff

joanbaezfan4: Bar chords are hard for me to play.

ToneDeafVagrant: Joan, notice where Lyle's thumb goes for the 9th chords, it gives you greater leverage on the neck to push the strings down...TDV

joanbaezfan4: wow TDV that worked wonderfully, thanks!

Lyle: Ok, now jam! Try playing the rhythm riff along to the looping jam track.

Lyle: The best choice of scales to use while improvising over this jam would be the C minor pentatonic scale:

C min pentatonic

Lyle: Here's a big fat blues riff made from the notes in the C minor pentatonic scale.

solo 1

Lyle: You can play this riff over and over again throughout the whole progression if you wanted to. Here's a video example:

solo 1

ToneDeafVagrant: Hey Lyle, is that a thumb I see in there in the solo, when you hit the low C note on the fat E string?

Lyle: Yes, you can use your thumb to play the low C note (8th fret - 6th string) instead of your index finger.

mike: Is the C7 a moveable chord, if I moved it up 2 frets would that make it a D7?

Lyle: Yes, 2 frets higher would make it a D7.

Radica: That also dictates to the 9th chords then? Cool

Lyle: Radica, yes, 9th chords are move-able too.

Lyle: Take this blues riff that is now a repeating "theme" and add other little blues riffs in-between it. Here's an example:


solo 2

solo 2

ZZ: sounds like Jimi to me :)

Lyle: Yes, and a SRV style too.

Radica: I need more work on that nice vibrato of yours. Are you using more of your wrist?

Lyle: Yes, this is mostly wrist vibrato. Here's a video of different vibratos:

vibrato

ToneDeafVagrant: It's almost like the two phrases talk to each other.