Blues is a great genre to learn on guitar. It’s fun, easy and full of emotion. In this lesson I’ll teach you the best way to learn blues guitar.

Intro to Learning Blues Guitar

Before you get started you’ll need a few things:

– A guitar (Electric or Acoustic)

– Your guitar tuned to E Standard (Use our Guitar Tuner if you need to!)

– 1-2 Hours to complete the full lesson

How Blues Guitar Works

The Origins of Blues

Too often people forget how Blues began. It’s important to remember that Blues actually started as a vocal genre. The first Blues songs were “performed” hundreds of years ago by working slaves.

Since slaves were certainly not allowed instruments, they used their poetic songs & hymns to express their day-to-day struggles. These songs were also the first true Blues songs.

Blues Guitar Song Structure

It’s important to remember that the most common structure for a blues song is what is known as a “12 Bar format”. Each line of music you see on sheet music is known as a “bar”.

One “Bar” of music

As you can see each bar is broken up into 4 sections, called “measures”. Since there are 4 measures per bar and 12 bars per songs, a typical 12 bar blues song will have around 48 measures.

Chord Progressions

Blues also follows a common chord progression as well. This requires a little bit of music theory knowledge to understand. However, I’ll do my best to put it simply.

Blues follows the I (Tonic), IV (Subdominant) and V (Dominant) chord progression. Typically, a song will start and end on the I Chord, or “Tonic”.

Follow this simple exercise to find your subdominant and dominant chords. Let’s take the C chord for example as a tonic. 

1. Hold your fist out in front of you

2. Stick out your thumb – This is your I Chord, or tonic: C

3. Stick out your index finger as well – Your II Chord: D

4. Continue counting until you reach your ring finger – Your IV (Subdominant) Chord: F

5. Raise your pinky – Your V (Dominant) Chord: G

A C Blues Chord Progression would then be: C , F and G.

Put the Missing Pieces together with this Free Blues Guitar Lesson by Hawkeye!

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Learn to Play Blues Guitar

Learn Blues Guitar Chords

While any chord will work, you’ll find when learning blues guitar that 7th chords are very common.

One of the benefits of many of 7th chords is that they are movable. You can play them anywhere on the neck with the same shape and be just fine.

Just remember, the key of the chord will change to whatever the tonic is.

For example, if you move a D7 chord up 2 frets it becomes an E7 Chord.

Common Blues Guitar Chords

See More Blues Guitar Chords on Dummies.com

More Blues Chord Diagrams on BBluesGuitar.com

Master the Blues Guitar with an In-Depth DVD Course

Blues Guitar Scales

You will find that much like rock music, the Minor Pentatonic scale is very common in Blues music. It has a mellow feel to it and is very easy to manipulate.

Below is a diagram outlining the 5 overlapping positions of the minor pentatonic scale.

Thank you to Nachtarbeiter for the awesome diagram!

The minor pentatonic scale was the first scale I ever learned. It’s a great starting point as it’s very easy to memorize and every pattern requires minimal hand movement.

I suggest working on memorizing each of these positions. Once mastered, you will be able to improvise a Blues guitar lead anywhere on the neck.

More on the Blues Scale from GuitarLessons.com

Ultimate-Guitar Lesson on the Blues Scale (w/ TAB)

Master the Pentatonic Scale with Mark Brennan

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Additional Resources

Advanced Blues Guitar Lesson
12bar.de Lesson on Blues Scales

JustinGuitar Blues Scale Lesson

Learn & Master Spotlight Series: Blues Guitar

Learn & Master Blues Guitar – Sample

Conclusion

I hope you found this lesson helpful. There is a lot more to learn in the world of Blues guitar, so be sure to check out the additional links throughout.

As always, should you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment box below. I’ll get back to you within 24 hours, usually much sooner. Thanks for reading!