The Blues Guitar

Henry Thomas (1874, Big Sandy, Texas -1930?) was an American blues singer, songwriter and musician. After leaving home in his teens he drifted along the Texas rail lines as a hobo before earning his way as an itinerant songster.

Contradiction Blues is a short fingerstyle blues piece I wrote. I called it 'Contradiction Blues' because of the contradiction between the mellow, laid back section at the start and the more punchy and bluesy second part of the tune. The piece is written for a guitar tuned to Open D and predominantely uses a travis picking pattern with a regular alternating bass line. 

On this site I will post a number of tabs of various blues tunes. I will post them not only in pdf format but also in power tab format. Power Tab is a tab editor package which was created many years ago by Brad Larsen. Although the software is quite old and no longer updated I still find it to be one of the best tab editors out there for the type of music I play and write.

One of the most commonly used alternate tunings is that of Open D. The tuning is used across many different styles of guitar music but most commonly it is used in blues and folk music. How to tune to Open D Open D tuning tunes the strings of the guitar so that when all the strings are played open it forms a D Major chord. The D Major chord is formed from the three notes which make up the D Major triad, these are the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the D Major scale, which are D, F# and A respectively. Thus, each of the guitar strings in open D tuning will be tuned to one of these three notes.

Introduction In this blog, I will look at different types of guitars out there. However, instead of doing individual reviews of specific makes and models I will initially just look at the different styles of guitar available and some of the pro's and con's of each when playing this type of music. The Classical Guitar  

I thought as a starter I would post one of my favourite videos of Big Bill Broonzy playing his famous tune Hey Hey. The sound quality isn't great on this clip but it's more than good enough to hear his excellent and effortless playing style. In time I will upload a tutorial for this song along with a tab. But for now enjoy this clip. Neil

Welcome to this new blog we have set up.  We are both amateur guitarists who enjoy playing the old style blues like country and delta blues. This blog has been set up to share some of our knowledge on the subject as well as any other interesting stuff we find about it. Over time we hope to post articles which not only provide information on this type of music but also lessons to help anyone trying to learn this style of guitar. Hope you Enjoy! Neil