A blues rhythm #1 for guitar

By Ed Sadler Guitar Lessons Comments Off on A blues rhythm #1 for guitar


A blues rhythm #1 for guitar

Hey everyone, this week it’s time to focus on some rhythm chops so you have something to play all those wonderful licks over that you have been learning from the last 3 lessons.

This lesson we are dealing with 4 chords: A7, D9, E9 and F9.

The easy part is that D9, E9 and F9 are all the same shape, the hard part is that it is tough for the inexperienced to get from A7 to D9 and vice versa as well as to get from A7 to E9 or F9.

When I learn new chords, I like to play the chord, take my fingers off and repeat ad nauseum until it sinks in. This could take anywhere from 2min to well, you don’t wanna know. Let’s just put it this way, I had one student who was having trouble getting from A major to Bminor and so he practiced it a lot. 3,000 times alot!

So you want to memorize the shapes first (follow the steps on the video) then you want to practice the difficult moves from chord to chord say A7 to D9, A7 To E9 and A7 to F9. Do this over and over until each change is smooth and relatively easy. Once you have that down you are ready to play the rhythm in time. Make sure you play things slowly at first and make the chords sound clean. No unclear or muffly notes.

Here is the tab:

This is a 12 bar rhythm. The slashes at the top of the page count for one note per beat. The last bar contains a combination of quarter notes and eighth notes with a tie. I have put counting underneath if you don’t understand how to count such a rhythm.

 

 

Here is the video:

Follow the directions first to memorize the chords then do the switching chord practice and finally play the chords in time with me.

Next week we will learn how to jam over this progression with a few licks from past lessons.

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