Anyway, when feeling both blue & funky nothing matches the mood better than a funky blues! Here for your jamming pleasure is a groovy jam track, inspiration coming from watching Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan maul the Minor Pentatonic for 90 minutes on Mr. King’s “In Session” special on PBS.

This is a typical 12-bar blues progression in the key of A. Insert your favorite blues lyrics on top. I keep hearing “Rock Me Baby” over this, but that is B.B. King, not Albert. Maybe a funkified “Crosscut Saw” instead?? Oh well, have fun!

Funky Blues Jam Track – Key of A

Download Jam Track (Right click – Save As)

Here are some scale patterns to experiment with:

Scale diagrams software at www.NeckDiagrams.com

And here is the tab for the groove/bass line. I wrote each part of the riff just once, it is up to you to remember your blues form – Play A/A/A/A/D/D/A/A/E/D/A/A:

Stay tuned to GuitarTeacher.com.

The Bluesbreakers album with Eric Clapton and John Mayall is a must-listen-to record for all guitarists with blues/rock roots. The song “Hideaway” off that disc is a great instrumental that bands often cover. For jam nights, I prefer the song “Steppin’ Out” from the same album. There are fewer breaks than “Hideaway” and no groove changes to ‘train-wreck’ your jamming fun. Plus, the song’s uptempo shuffle groove is sure to get attention!

Here is a jam track for you to warm-up your chops!

Clapton Jam Track – Key of G

Rhythm Guitar Parts

The rhythm guitar comp is a very straight-forward, but fast, I-IV-V 12-bar progression with chords played on the “1″ and the “and of 2″. The G7 and G9 chords in the following example are essentially interchangeable and are there for variety.

Lead Guitar Part

Learn to play this simple (but fast!) 12 bar head at the beginning and end of the tune and you’ve got the song.

Check out the following resources for more Eric Clapton sheet music and blues guitar instruction:

• Eric Clapton sheet music
• Eric Clapton on Songsterr.com
• Private Online Guitar Lessons

To practice this change, here is a short blues guitar backing track . It is a simple loop of two bars of D7 (the I chord) followed by two bars of G7 (the IV chord). As such, this blues jam track is considered to be in the key of D.

Blues Jam Track (1-4 Change) – Key of D

To start, it is easier to use one scale, the Blues Scale, to play over both chords. This scale is shown below.

A more advanced soloing concept is to target each chord of the progression with a different scale. Two common scales to do this would be the Major Pentatonic and the Mixolydian mode. Each of these scales more closely fits the corresponding major quality of the dominant 7th chords we are soloing against. This opens up new and unique notes for each chord that are unavailable when using the same blues scale for both chords.

The trickier part of this approach is that the scale must change as the chords change. The advantage of this more advanced approach is that it will contribute to the sound of ‘making the changes’.

Below are the two scales for each chord. The major chord within each chord is highlighted with grey dots.

Try this idea against the jam track.

In the next lesson, we will look at some example licks to easily exploit the idea of different patterns for each chord of the I-IV change.

Until then, jam away and have fun!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTorczDeb7A

The song is in the key of E and is really just a blues form. It does interestingly feature a bar of B7 that is in 6/4 time before returning to common time for the E minor pentatonic lick.

The chords used are E major, an open string D5 power chord over an A bass note, A major, and B7. The little lick in the tune is straight out of the open position of the E minor pentatonic scale. About as straight forward as it gets!

There is a guitar solo break built off an E major triad in the 12th position. Simply strum it really fast while sliding into the shape at the beginning of each of the first two measures. Then slide every two beats for a measure and then each beat for the final measure before returning to the open A chord.

This song is famous for being one of the first ever to feature distortion. The tone is very gritty. Link Wray famously used a pencil to punch holes in the speaker of his amplifier to get this raw sound. I might suggest not going to that extreme! But think raunchy. The song also features a tremolo pedal. Or if your amp has the tremolo built in, so much the better.

Here is a video of the four-bar intro:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Htxgbk9k8Zc

The tablature for this part:

To see Stevie in action watch the video embed below. The playlist beneath the video has links to the tab songbook, the DVD of this performance and other Stevie Ray Vaughan products and reference material. Get to know him!

Slow Blues Jam Track – Key of G

Download Jam Track (Right click – Save As)

We can spend a lifetime working out new licks to this progression. We will learn more Slow Blues licks and explore the B.B. King Box in upcoming lessons. Until then, here are some suggested scale patterns.

The studies simplify the work for the left hand by using just two chords: C and G7.

The right hand fingerings are shown using the classical abbreviations for the picking hand fingers:

• P = Thumb
• I = Index
• M= Middle
• A = Ring

Practice these slowly and in time. Be conscious of your left hand technique, as well, and try to have all notes ring out.

These can be tiring both physically and mentally. Hearing the same two chords repeatedly is an unfair form of torture! I would recommend choosing two or three patterns at the most to work on in a given practice session.

Some other resources here:

• Giuliani 120 Right Hand Studies on Songsterr
• Giuliani Right Hand Studies (PDF)
• Giuliani Right Hand Studies Excerpts with fingerings & tab (PDF)

Hey guys! I have some private students working on ‘Canon Rock’ so here are some jam track resources for them and you.

The original JerryC full length backing tracking used by JerryC, FunTwo, MattRach, etc. is embedded below. You can download it to your computer here (right click to save).

Canon Rock – Jerry C Backing Track

Of course you should know the progression anytime you are soloing. Here are the Canon Rock chords:

Next is a loop of just the main backing riff for never ending soloing. I am providing both a full tempo Canon Rock jam track and a second track at 80% tempo.

Canon Rock – Looping Jam Track (Full Tempo)

Canon Rock – Looping Jam Track (80% Tempo)

Two additional slower tempos are provided exclusively for private members. Why not join them?

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Canon Rock – Looping Jam Track (66%Tempo)

Canon Rock – Looping Jam Track (50% Tempo)

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Canon Rock Video with Tablature – Slow Version (75% Tempo)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pICL9lHrlPo

If you want to decide for yourself how much or little to slow down the video (or speed up for you crazy shredders!), I am making the original video available for download here – Original GuitarTeacher Canon Rock video (.mp4 – Quicktime). Simply right-click and select “Save As…” to download to your computer. See my original post to get the tab and other resources.

Using Apple’s Quicktime Player you can time stretch and loop sections for practice. This is the format I now record my private online guitar lessons so all my private students can review their lessons with these same options tempo and looping options.

A tutorial on how to do this using the Apple Quicktime Player is available for Private Members at the end of this lesson.

[private_GuitarTeacher] A tutorial on how to use Apple's QuickTime Player to practice guitar videos.


[/private_GuitarTeacher]

Have fun!

Country Guitar Jam Track – Key of A

Here is a country lick to get you started, played over the A chord. Use ‘hybrid picking’ (the ‘M’ in the notation refers to using the middle finger of the picking hand) to give this the right country snap.

Country Lick Example

I’ll show more licks that work over this same track in a separate lesson so y’all come back now, ya hear?