The Blues Guitar

  Travis Picking is a popular playing technique in Fingerstyle guitar. It is attributed to country and wester singer and guitarist Merle Travis who was active during the mid 1900s. It is a widely used technique and is seen in many genre's of music, especially blues and folk music. The playing technique, in simplest terms, involves playing alternating bass notes on the lower strings of the guitar whilst simultaneously playing the melody notes on the higher strings of the instrument. In this post and accompanying video I want to give you an overview of the Travis Picking playing style. Bass Notes On the guitar, playing the bass notes with the thumb and the melody line with the other fingers is not a new technique. It has been done since standard 6 string guitars have existed. Where Travis Picking differs is that it plays alternating bass notes on alternating strings, as opposed to playing the bass notes over and over on a single string. This gives the bass line of the music more vari...

  In this video, I will show you how to play the guitar part from Mississippi John Hurt's song Nobody's Dirty Business. The guitar part is played on a guitar in standard tuning, is in the Key of C, and is in 4/4 time. Like most of Mississippi John Hurt's songs, this is very repetitive. The guitar part is basically 7 bars long and is repeated through the entire song. However, for each verse that he sings, he plays two of these 7 bar sections back to back, then adds a small turnaround at the end before repeating. You will see this in the tab for the music below. In the video have played through this whole 14 bar section once. The guitar part uses a travis picking pattern, so if you are used to playing like this, it shouldn't be too problematic.  Below are some tips to help you play this piece and links to download the tab. I have also provided the lyrics if you wish to sing the vocal parts too Nobody's Dirty Business Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT Nobody's Dirty...

  Mississippi John Hurt (1893 - 1966) is one of the most famous blues singers and guitarists of his era. His deep, mellow voice and characteristic guitar style give his music a very distinctive and noticable sound. In this post, and the accompanying video, I want to have a look at his guitar playing style and give you some tips on how to play like him.   Tempo Although many people think of blues music as being quite slow and moody, during the era that John Hurt was active much blues music was quite up-tempo. John Hurt's music is no different and much of his music is played at quite a fast tempo, sometimes upwards of 150bpm. Although this fast pace may not always be immediately noticable when listening to his music, it does become more evident when trying to play the guitar parts. Because of the fast tempo, it can make the guitar parts quite tricky to play. The tempo can make changing chords when playing quite difficult as the have to be formed at such speed. Although he uses f...

  This is another blues turnaround in the Key of D. It is taken from the blues tune Boogie Woogie Dance by Tampa Red. The turnaround is played on a guitar tuned to Open D. The turnaround is quite long, taking up 4 bars and it is played at quite a fast tempo of nearly 200bpm. The turnaround is farily straightforward to play if you are comfortable with fingerstyle guitar. The only issue may be the fast tempo, but if you start playing it slowly, then gradually build up the tempo, you learn it easily. The video shows me playing it at normal speed, and then shows me playing it slower with the tab on the screen. To download the free tabs, click the links below. Blues Turnaround in E - No 2 Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT Thanks for Reading, Neil