Coast Road Blues - Original Blues Music With Free Tab
In this video I will show you a new piece of blues music that I have written called Coast Road Blues. I got the name Coast Road Blues because when I was out driving along a coastal road, the idea for the music came to me. It is a fingerstyle guitar piece where you play the bass notes on the lower strings with your thumb and the melody notes on the higher strings with your other fingers. It is played on a guitar in standard tuning, is mostly in 4/4 time (but there is a 2/4 bar which also repeats), and is in the key of E. At its core, it has an eight bar structure that repeats with variations, but this 8 bar structure is very similar to a 12 bar structure just shorter, so it should sound quite familiar. Although it is a relatively straightforward piece of music, it does have quite a fast tempo, and there is also quite a lot of variation in the bass picking pattern, which can make it a bit trickier to play.
The structure of the music is:
Intro - 8 Bar (Section 1) - 8 Bar (Section 2) - 8 Bar (Section 3) - 8 Bar (Section 1) - Outro
Below are some tips to help you play this piece, and links to download the tab.
- Fast Tempo - The music has quite a fast tempo And although this shouldn't be too much of a problem for the majority of the music when you're playing runs of 8th notes within the music, you have to play them quite quickly. The 8th notes occur in both the the melody line or in the bass line. If you're struggling to play these notes with the fast tempo of the music, try just slowing the tempo down. It will still sound good with the slower tempo and then you can try and build the tempo up to its original speed. Another option is to leave out some of the 8th notes. So if you have a series of 8th notes together that you're struggling a play fast, just drop one of the notes out and you have more time to play the other notes that way.
- 2/4 Bar - Although most of the music is in 4/4 time, there is also a 2/4 bar. This 2/4 bar occurs at the star of the main 8 bar sections of music. and serves to act as a lead into this. However, there is not a 2/4 bar when the 8 Bar (Section 3) is played. This can be slightly confusing at first and it can make it easy to lose your place in the music and also lose the timing of the music. If this is causing you problems, there are a number of things you could do. You could insert the 2/4 bar prior to section three and this would keep the continuity of the music. You could also just omit all the 2/4 bars from the music, which would make it easier to play, but It would be detrimental to the character of the music, because the 2/4 bar is an intrinsic part of the music. Hopefully, with practice this 2/4 bar shouldn't trip you up too much and you should be able to play it in the way it was written.
- Mixing up the the Bass Picking - The bass picking pattern in the music has a lot of variety within it. It not only has the standard quarter notes getting played on each beat of the bar, but it also has half notes, whole notes and 8th notes as well. This can make the bass picking part in quite tricky to play, and it can be very easy to come out of time when playing it. If you do find that you're not able to keep time properly with all this variation, perhaps try practicing it along with a metronome and this way. you can still hear every beat of the bar. Another way to do it would be to remove this variation in the bass notes and just play quarter notes on each beat of the bar. It is far easier to keep time this way, although the music won't sound as good, it will help you keep time and afterwards you can start adding this variance into the bass picking pattern once you are competent with the timing of the music.
This is about all I need to say about this piece. It is a relatively straightforward Piece of finger style blues music. If you're comfortable playing it with the fast tempo and can nail those bass notes correctly this music shouldn't pose too many problems.
Neil
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