Blues Guitar Improvisation

Ok so this is the blues guitar players holy grail, creating your own sound! We all want to reach that goal with our playing. Making our style SO unique that when people hear us play they instantly KNOW who it is without having to hear the singer!

So, how do you do it? Experimentation is the key! Start off by learning just a few blues licks  then spend time playing around with those licks, rewrite them over and over, make new beginnings, add your own endings until you end up with a whole bunch of licks that have all morphed from those original few.

Next make a list of all your favorite blues guitar players, then study their style of blues guitar improvisation. Say you had a list of Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler, you’d then learn say 5 licks from each of them, then repeat the experimentation process. Imagine melding the styles of those 4 guitarists into one, after a while you’d start to see a unique style starting to emerge. I’m a big fan of studying guitarists from different genres too, imagine putting a few reggae, country or even metal flavors into your blues playing. It might sound weird at first but that’s why you practice! It takes time to shape your style but it’s ultimately going to be worth it!

Read interviews with your guitar heroes they’ll always tell stories about how they used to copy THEIR heroes when they were starting out. Just look at Eric Clapton his late 60’s style was really similar to blues legend Albert King! Even Hendrix used to copy Buddy Guy in his early days and look at the sound he ended up creating!

So, if you want to improve your blues guitar improvisation, get learning those licks people!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.