The most important aspect of any blues guitar lesson is increasing your ability to make everything you do on the guitar sound completely "organic". This not only goes for your song writing, but also and especially for your soloing. Improvisation is the heart and soul of blues guitar playing. But the last thing in the world that you want is to sound anything less than tight and professional when you solo. Needless to say, this means that it's a fine line to walk between sounding like an organically-grown blues master professional, and sounding like a second-rate pop star's session guitar man.

For this blues guitar lesson, think of someone like Stevie Ray Vaughn. Maybe the greatest electric blues guitar player in history, Stevie Ray always sounded totally professional and in control--never sloppy. But, that man snorted soul from his nostrils! Every note he played, he caused to come screaming and writhing out of that FenderStrat. Whether he was playing rhythm, riffs, or solos, he made you feel the joyful pain of the blues guitar. And how did he accomplish this incredible feat? He did it by always making it seem as if whatever song he was playing had just been made up on the spot and had never been played before--even though everyone in the audience knew otherwise, every time he played it felt totally spontaneous to them.

That is what "organic" means. That is what blues guitar playing is all about.

There is always method behind the madness, however. You can rest assured that when Stevie Ray gave himself a blues guitar lesson, he was not fooling around. He was deadly serious about mastering certain techniques--techniques which he practiced over and over and over again until his fingers were doing the moves over an imaginary fretboard in his sleep.

So...what's in this blues guitar lesson for you?

*Never try to impress your listeners or other musicians with your sheer note-playing ability. Don't be a speed demon and don't be a juggler. Listen to the bass player, listen to the lead melody of the song, and craft your solo in relation to those elements. So you know all those notes? So what? All that matters, in the end, is the feel of the song. Technique is there to facilitate that. However, that does not mean that "you can express it all in four notes". It simply means that you must put taste before pyrotechnics.

*Play major pentatonic scales over the I chord, but minor pentatonic over the IV and V chords. If you don't understand what this means, study more music theory.

*Use some double-stops and chords in your soloing. This is the blues. You can throw in "chunky stuff" and sound great. You want plenty of meat on your musical bones.

*Don't be afraid of "accidentals". This means, if the sound is going to be right, hit a note that is outside of the scale or even the key that you are presently playing in. This will make you sound totally "wild" and "exotic".

*Use plenty of slurs on the guitar--hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides. Make your guitar speak, not just sound off.

Hopefully, this has been a good basic blues guitar lesson for you. Apply these ideas and you will rapidly progress in your blues guitar playing!

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