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By: Christopher Buckley
It is not that easy to pull out a definition of blues. You can
tell that Robert Johnsons' Rambling on My Mind or B.B. King's
Everyday I Have the Blues is definitely blues, but what about
van Halen, Al Di Meola or Pavarotti's songs? Of course, you could define the blues by the call-response
structure, the dominant 7th chords, the shuffle rhythm, the
I-IV-V progression and things like these, but the most complete
definition is one that Eric Clapton himself gave to blues music
in an interview in 1998: My definition of Blues is that it's a musical form which is very
disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you
can have either of those things but it's the two together that
make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a
human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it.
(Eric Clapton, 1998) The Blues History There are many books on the history of blues. It was born in the
20th century's Mississippi Delta in the U.S., short after the
Civil War. This music style was played by slaves and white
people referred to it as sorrow songs, plantation songs or
workaday songs. The term blues was used for the first time
around 1925. It is believed that the band leader William Christopher Handy
was the one to write the first blues songs in 1909, which was
later printed and documented. The song was initially called
Memphis Blues and got the name of Mister Crump later. He got his
inspiration from a blues song he heard in the Mississippi
railway station six years earlier. W.C. Handy wrote other songs
too, such as Beale Street Blues or St. Louis Blues and nowadays
there's a blues award named after him - the W.C. Handy Award. What Do You Need To Learn To Play Blues Guitar? In order to learn to play blues guitar, there are a few things
you need. First of all, you need to own an electric or acoustic
guitar with strings made from other than nylon in standard
tuning. You also need to know how to read tablature, as well as
have some basic guitar knowledge and know how to play a few
chords. You also need some Eric Clapton CDs with blues classics, such as
Blues Breakers, From the Cradle or Eric Clapton Unplugged and a
good CD player with an auto-repeat shuffle. There's also a
plug-in for Winamp you can use to slow down music. A small chord
book you can find in any guitar shop is also handy. But most
importantly, in order to learn to play blues guitar, you need
some good ears. If you already have some basic guitar knowledge, you can learn
to play blues guitar on your own, with the aid of a simple chord
book. However, finding a blues guitar teacher who is willing to
help you learn to play blues guitar in your area is definitely a
good thing. If you have the time and money to take up private
lessons, this will probably help improving your guitar playing
skills. About the author:
Christopher Buckley is owner of one of the internet's largest
guitar learning resources. To find out more about learning blues
guitar, visit Learn Guitar Blog
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