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Knowing your twelve bar blues chord progressions is one of the best ways to get a handle on playing guitar. Once you understand the basic principles of blues guitar, you can start to experiment with improvising within the chord progressions and to put your own mark on the music.

The twelve bar blues chord progression is very widely used in pop and rock music. If you have listened to and tried to play some blues songs, you will understand how popular this basic chord sequence is. In playing blues guitar you take the main chord of the song you are playing, which is called the “tonic”, the fifth step of the scale – the “dominant”, and the chord below the dominant, the “subdominant”, or fourth step. So if you are playing a song in the key of E your tonic chord is E, the subdominant is A and the dominant is B. If you are playing in the key of A, your chords are A, D and E.

In musical notation your chord sequence is commonly written in Roman numerals. In the case of the twelve bar blues chord progression, it will be written as I IV V. Using this notation you can tell which chords you will be using in any key.

So let’s look at how the twelve bar blues chord progression actually progresses. Well, the first four bars use the tonic chord, in the fifth and sixth you play the subdominant, in the seventh and eight you will play the tonic again, in bar nine it’s the dominant, in bar ten it’s the subdominant and in the eleventh and twelfth bars it’s the tonic, or in this bar the dominant seventh chord is usually used to prepare for the tonic chord to begin the progression again.

The fact is that the seventh chord is used a lot in blues music rather than just the straight major chord. This will make the chord sequence in the key of E look like this:

E7 E7 E7 E7

A7 A7 E7 E7

B7 A7 E7 E7

Or you could just play the seventh chords in the fourth and twelfth bars like this:

E E E E7

A A E E

B A E E7

Or you could play all major chords except for the subdominant and the final bar:

E E E E

A7 A7 E E

B A7 E E7

So there you have a couple of variations in the twelve bar blues chord progression already. Once you have the feel of the progression using open chords, you can try experimenting with the barre chord and power chord versions of the basic chords.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/twelve-bar-blues-chord-progressions-1090712.html

New Orleans around the end of the nineteenth century was like a melting pot of different cultures and forms of music. You had plenty of improvised jazz music on the streets, in funerals and during the Mardi gras festivals. The pioneers of jazz were possibly one of the popular brass bands during the 1880-1884 period. The brass band music quickly spread to dancehalls, saloons and indeed the dubious districts by the end of the decade. Thanks to jazz music New Orleans acquired popularity as a place of perpetual fun. Jazz music which grew out of blues music was actually blues with instruments.

The popularity of jazz music, due to its rhythm or swing, improvisation and lilt received a fresh boost with the advent of the radio which all but killed the record industry. Today there is a fresh awakening of interest in learning jazz music. Thanks to the internet there are a large number of web sites which teach how to practice jazz bass lines.

One such web site has more than 140,000 videos with trained professionals, some of whom have learnt from the Beatles, teaching how to practice jazz piano. So you could start by seeing your instructor teach the basics on a piano. The basics could be how to create a bass line, how to play an octave and how to try and walk rather than to jump while using your left hand. You can practice jazz bass lines for jazz piano in G major, in A major, in C major and so on. The professional will teach you how to improvise in Db major and on playing a walking jazz piano bass line.

When you are comfortable you can practice jazz piano and learn how to play the popular “Besseme Mucho.” The advantage with the system is of course that you can repeat the video as many times as you like. The introductory course is free of charge. The entire exercise is relaxed and friendly. You feel totally at home even as your instructor teaches the lesson and shares various tricks and tips in the process.

Myself webmaster of http://www.studiobypass.com – find tools for learning jazz music, jazz midi files, intermediate jazz tools, Big Band jazz music, jazz play alongs, practice jazz piano and more about jazz music.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/how-to-practice-jazz-bass-lines-965555.html

You want to get off to a good start as a blues guitar player, you will need five notes. Well, five notes in any key. The five notes you will need is a scale called the minor pentatonic. If you are playing in the key of E the notes you are going to be using are E G A B D.

The minor pentatonic scale and the changing relationships between those five notes will enable you to give your guitar playing the distinctive blues flavor. Get to know this scale by experimenting with simple tunes. You can make them up for yourself and play them up and down the guitar neck.

As you spend some time playing your own tunes you can listen to CDs of the great blues guitarists. Get familiar with how you are using the five notes of the minor pentatonic scale and see how the guitarists of the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties used them. See how those old bues guitar players played inside the scale and how they ventured outside it to add some spice to the blues. Listen to how they used slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs as well as up and down picking.

If you like the licks you are hearing in the work of the great blues guitarists, teach them to yourself. You need to be careful here. Your aim is not to duplicate note-for-note the licks of the greats, but you need to tap into the mood of their playing and see how it connects with your mood. Don’t be afraid to leave some empty spaces. You don’t have to fill your blues solos with notes.

Next, you can start getting into mixing the major pentatonic scale with the minor pentatonic. You will find that blues guitar players of the past did that to great effect. So, still playing in the key of E, but now mixing the minor and major pentatonic, you get the notes E F# G G# A B C# D. An important element of blues music is the flattened fifth note. It can be overused, so just look at it as another tool to help you learn to speak blues. So with the flattened fifth added, your notes are E F# G G# A Bb B C# D.

Now you have a bunch of notes that, played one after the other, will sound pretty ordinary. Go back and start experimenting with those notes. Make up some  more tunes. Listen again to the big-time blues guitar players. Learn which notes are your bread and butter and which of these notes are to be used a little more sparingly.

If you want a little help to start you off, try using licks in the major pentatonic scale over the I and V chords. You might notice your minor notes go well with your IV chord.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? http://playaguitarforfree.com/ is my blog which shows you that there are many people like you who wish to learn how to play bass, acoustic or electric guitar. You will find guitar lessons, videos, articles and reviews to answer your questions, calm your fears and help you play the guitar.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/the-blues-solo-and-how-to-approach-it-905917.html