Canon Blues - Tutorial + Tab

 


In this post I want to have a look at the famous piece of Classical music Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel and put a blues twist on it. Canon in D is one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of music and dates back to 1680. It actually has a fairly simple structure underlying it which comprises a repeating 8 bar sequence using 5 different chords. 

I want to have a look at this 8 bar - 5 chord sequence and then I want to do a blues version of Canon where I loosely follow the melody line of the original. I have split this into 4 sections: Intro, Verse, Chorus and Outro, and these sections can be repeated as you feel necessary. 

In a future video, I will take this chord sequence and write a whole new piece of blues music which diverges from the melody line of the original. 

The music is in 4/4 time and is played on a guitar in Open D tuning and it is in the Key of D. It is a fingerstyle piece and is best suited to being played on an acoustic guitar.

Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.

Canon Blues Downloadable Tab - Power Tab - PDF - TXT
 
  • Keeping Time - The music has a bass line which is played with the thumb. it isn't in a travis picking pattern but instead just plays the same string within each bar, whether that be the 5th or 6th string. For the main body of the music, the bass notes are played as quarter notes on each beat of the bar. However, in the intro and outro they are played as half notes on the 1st and 3rd beat of each bar. Also in bar 6 there is a bass note played as a half note on the 1st beat, then 2 quarter notes on the 3rd and 4th beats. Make sure you get the timing of these half and quarter bass notes correct as it's easy to let them drop out of time. Use a metronome to help keep time if need be.
  • Triplet Feel (or not) - I play the music with a triplet feel added to give it a slightly bluesy feel. This is where 8th notes are played like split triplets instead of equal spacing between them. There aren't many notes in the music which are actually 8ths so it doesn't impact the music too much. Therefore, if you aren't comfortable playing with this triplet feel ( as it can make the timing a bit tricky) just leave it out and plays the 8ths with equal spacing. The music won't have as much of a blues feel to it, but it will still sound fine.
  • Low Melody Notes - In quite a few bars of the music, the melody notes have quite a low pitch and therefore have to be played on lower strings of the guitar, strings 5 and 4. This can make picking them quite tricky because most of the time in fingerstyle music the melody will be on the top 3 strings of the guitar. However, don't be tempted to play these using the thumb as it can make it easy to lose timing on the bass notes. Only play the bass notes with the thumb. For these low melody notes use the index or middle fingers as you do for all the other melody notes in the music, even if it feels a bit tricky playing these on the lower strings.

This is about all I need to say about this piece. It is quite a simple piece to play if you are comfortable playing fingerstyle guitar. Just make sure you keep even time when playing and start slowly and build up the tempo if you are having difficulty. 
 
Thanks for Reading,
Neil

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