Fingerstyle Blues in E

 

 



Fingerstyle blues is commonly played in the key of E. This is not surprising as a guitar in standard tuning is loosely tuned to the key of E, so it is a popular key for much guitar music. In this post, and the accompanying video, I will look at some of the most common ways to play blues music in this key. I will have a look at common chords used and how they fit into a 12 bar blues sequence, a standard picking pattern in this key, and also look at how you can incorporate your own melody in this key.

Chords

Blues music tends to use 3 chords and these are at scale degrees I, IV, V7. In the key of E, this gives you the chords E, A and B7. The A chord is played as an A Major, but is also often played as A7 as well. These 3 chords are very common in all types of music, especially blues.

Fitting them into a 12 bar blues

Taking these 3 chords, they can be fitted into a 12 bar blues sequence and you can hear the bluesy sound that they give. Here is a common 12 bar blues sequence in E

E-E-E-E

A-A-E-E

B7-A-E-E

Try playing this through and you will hear how they sound.

Picking Patterns

There are many ways that fingerstyle blues can be played in E but I am going to look at one of the most common styles.

Most blues music is in 4/4 time, which is 4 quarter notes to every bar. When playing this style of blues, the thumb tends to play the bass notes at regular intervals on every beat of the bar. These notes tend to be the root note of the underlying chord being played. e.g. when playing the E chord, the thumb will play the lowest E on the guitar on every beat of the bar. And likewise for the other chords. This differs from other blues picking patterns which use alternating bass notes or a travis picking pattern. In this pattern I am showing you, the thumb plays the same note on the same string until the underlying chord changes.

Whilst the thumb keeps this regular bass note pattern, the melody line is played on the higher strings of the guitar with the other fngers.

Melody Line and Scales 

If you want to incorporate your own melodies into these blues sequences, there are a number of commonly used scales which can be used in blues music.

The first scale is the minor pentatonic scale. This is a commonly used 5 note scale, and in the key of E it has the following 5 notes:

E A D G B
 
These notes correspond to all the open strings on a standard tuned guitar which makes improvising melody lines quite easy using this scale.

Another scale which works well with blues music is the Minor Blues Scale. This is very similar to the minor pentatonic scale but with an additional note. In the key of E, this scale would be:

E A D G Bb B

This additional note is called the blue note and is a flattened 5th in the scale. This note has a real blues sound to it when incorporated into the music. Again, this incorporates all the open strings on a standard tuned guitar.

These scales are a good starting point for writing your own blues music or improvising over a piece of blues music

Putting it all together


I have shown above some of the commonly used techniques for playing fingerstyle blues in the key of E. If you learn the chord structure and picking patterns, and incorporate the scales shown above, you will be well on your way to playing and writing blues music in this commonly used key.
 
Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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