It’s possible to be playing something incorrectly and unless the
error is corrected immediately the mistake becomes ingrained and
will turn up when you less expect it (and less want it) when you
are under pressure, usually this occurs in a performance
situation.

No matter how a newbie guitarist might try to avoid the musical
‘facts of life’ eventually almost everyone comes to realize that
there cannot be any progress without practice; the trick is to be
aware of and avoid the common practice hazards that sideline 95%
of guitarists.

Tip 1: Reading music on guitar is a two step process:

How many guitar players do you know that can read standard music
notation? Not many I’ll bet.

How many do you know that have tried to read and given up in
despair … most likely quite a few; maybe you have tried to
learn to read and given up.

Well you are not on your own, reading music on the guitar is one
of the most mysterious and difficult skills for guitarists to
learn the trick is to understand that reading music on the guitar
is actually two steps.

Step (a) the ability to read music notation WITHOUT the guitar in
your hands.

Step (b) to know the names of the notes and their location on the
guitar fretboard

Solution: begin by practicing easy music exercises without the
guitar in your hands; say the name of each note while imaging you
are playing the note on an invisible guitar.

Your left hand fingers (presuming you are right handed) should
move as if they were playing the notes on the fretboard.

Use your thumb as an imaginary fingerboard making certain that
your fingers touch the thumb; the sensation of touch will
reinforce the note position in your mind; of course if you are
reading an open note your left hand fingers won’t touch your
thumb.

Tip 2: max of 4 to 6 notes

The master musicians learn four to six notes at a time! That’s
true, the world’s finest musicians break down their learning into
tiny little pieces, perfect those notes and then move on to the
next four.

Now that’s an insider tip if ever these is one!

Learning this skill alone will accelerate your playing beyond
your wildest dreams.

Tip 3: data memory cards

Write anything you want to remember, chords, scales, chord
progressions etc., down on small question and answer cards.

The concept is simple; write a question on one side of the card
and the answer on the other, the idea is to do your learning away
from the guitar.

Here’s how you use your data memory cards: create three piles,
daily, weekly and monthly.

Daily pile: As you answer your questions from your daily pile
place the cards that you answered correctly into the weekly pile,
any questions that you answered incorrectly go back into the
daily pile.

Weekly pile: At the end of the week check your cards in the
weekly pile, the cards that you answered correctly go to the
monthly pile any questions you answered incorrectly go back to
the daily pile.

Monthly pile: When you check you answers at the end of the month
any cards that you answered correctly you can throw away as at
this point you have internalized the information, if you answered
any questions incorrectly they go back to the weekly pile.

This card system is very important, it’s your own contribution to
your learning that will help you overcome any mental ‘blocks’
with your learning that way you can spend 100% of your practice
time working on the physical (motor skills) aspect of playing the
guitar.

Unfortunately, most players end up more confused than they
started the guys and gals messing with different tunings often
find themselves down a musical dead end street, mostly because
they don’t know what they are playing; even if they do find
something they do like they don’t know what to call it, so their
new ’sound’ becomes “that thing”.

Guitarists going the equipment route are ultimately faced with
the problem of no matter how much stuff you put on a lame chord
progression you STILL end up with a lame chord progression with
interesting effects. It all comes down to the content of your
music, is it interesting or is it the same old boring stuff
recycled over again?

But what if they was an easy way to create new, interesting and
exciting chords and chord progressions for your next jam session;
the great news is there are many ways to develop easy chord
shapes and chord progressions that will blow everyone away, here
is just one of those ways.

Thinking outside the musical box:

Step 1: Take a familiar scale in a popular key.

I’m going to go with the minor pentatonic scale in the key of
‘G’; just about everyone knows how to play the minor pentatonic
scale even if they do not know the name of it and when it comes
to keys the two most popular keys at jam sessions would have to
be the keys of ‘E’ and ‘G’.

Step 2: Create chords from the names of the notes in the minor
pentatonic scale.

The ‘G’ minor pentatonic scale consists of the following notes.

G minor pentatonic = G – Bb – C – D – F

Step 3: Select a chord shape

I’m going with a standard ‘G’ chord shape in the open position

G

-3–
-3–
-0–
-0–
-2–
-3–

Since I will be moving this chord shape around the guitar
fingerboard I’m going to slightly modify the chord configuration.

Here is the same chord without the 3rd; essentially I have
created a really cool sounding ‘G’ chord using only two of the
possible three notes that make up the ‘G’ chord e.g., a ‘G’ chord
is spelt G – B – D in this particular shape I’m leaving out the
‘B’ note.

G (no 3rd)

-3–
-3–
-0–
-0–
-X–
-3–

Step 4: Move this shape around the fingerboard using the notes
from the G minor pentatonic scale as bass notes.

G minor pentatonic = [G] – Bb – C – D – F

G (no 3rd)

-3–
-3–
-0–
-0–
-X–
-3–

G minor pentatonic = G – [Bb] – C – D – F

Bb (no 3rd)

-6–
-6–
-0–
-0–
-X–
-6–

G minor pentatonic = G – Bb – [C] – D – F

C (no 3rd)

-8–
-8–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-8–

G minor pentatonic = G – Bb – C – [D] – F

D (no 3rd)

-10–
-10–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-10–

G minor pentatonic = G – Bb – C – D – [F]

F (no 3rd)

-1–
-1–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-1–

For those guitarists with cutaway model guitars here is another
version of the ‘F’ chord

F (no 3rd)

-13–
-13–
-0—
-0—
-x—
-13–

See how easy it is to find new sounds?

* the lead guitarist can play the “G’ minor pentatonic scale over
these chords

* you can play the chords in any order

Here is one example

G /// | Bb /// | G /// | C D G / |

* since none of these shapes (apart from the original G chord)
are in chord books you will definitely have created your own
sound.

The really sad thing about this is that many a time it was their
‘guitar instructor???’ that told them this! If this story is
familiar read on … you may be surprised at what I have to say.

The first step is to take a long, hard look at who is advising
you and explode this ‘finger’ myth. Never presume that just
because a person runs an add in a newspaper, has a business card
or a degree framed on their wall that they know what they are
doing.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to set yourself up as a ‘guitar
guru’ and in exactly the same way as there are accountants who
cannot operate a calculator (believe me, I’ve met them) there are
‘guitar teachers’ who don’t have the faintest idea about the
language of music; sure they can knock out a few licks and tricks
but they do not understand the language of music and how it
applies to the guitar fretboard.

The facts:

* It does not matter if your fingers are too fat.

* It does not matter if your fingers are too short (or too long)

* It does not mater if your fingers are too dumb (yes, I’m been
told by some students that they have dumb fingers)

How do I know this?

I’ve successfully taught many students who thought they had these
exact same problems.

Here is how we overcame their ‘finger’ issues.

Problem: fingers too short or too fat

Solution: Each chord is made up of a specific set of notes, since
it’s the notes that make up the chord NOT the shape on the
guitar, once you know how to ’spell’ chords you can design your
own chord shapes thereby making a shape that is easy to play
whilst still being musically correct.

Problem: Fingers too fat

Solution: Same as above, you might also want to consider looking
at the option of buying a twelve string guitar and removing six
of the strings (the octave strings); this way you will have a
wider fingerboard, this solution has worked well for a number of
my students with large finger.

Problem: Dumb fingers

Solution: I can assure you that you don’t have ‘dumb fingers’;
your fingers are not the thinking part of you they are the
‘doing’ part; without fail every single time I encounter someone
is convinced that they have ‘dumb finger’ I immediately get them
to put the guitar down and write or draw out the problem chord,
scale or progression on a piece of paper and 100% of the time
they write it out incorrectly!

I do this to show them that their problem is NOT their fingers,
it’s that they have not learned the information correctly.

What about ‘lazy fingers’?

Can’t help you there; lazy fingers are attached to lazy people
and nothing is ever going to improve there. (laughing)

Usually the people who are telling me this are guitar students in
their 50’s to mid 60’s, some are in their 70’s; they are coming
to me for one last try and it’s not just face to face lessons
where I encounter this, here’s a typical correspondence for my
online subscription community: “I am 75 so I have all kinds of
trouble trying to “stretch” my fingers so they can work with
chords. I am not getting any younger, so is mine a hopeless
case????”

As you can see there is a common theme, can I learn to play the
guitar or is too late? The truth of the matter is that it does
not matter what age you start to play guitar, it certainly does
not matter if your fingers are ‘too short’, too long’ or ‘too
dumb’… students have actually told me that they thought that
they had been giving dumb or clumsy fingers at birth.

It’s actually quite distressing to hear these stories; one guy in
his mid 50’s told me he had wanted to learn guitar all his life,
when he was sixteen he tried to learn however his ‘teacher’ told
him his fingers were too fat to play guitar so his parents made
him learn the piano accordion (which he hated), eventually he
gave the whole idea of learning music away.

Is it possible to learn to play latter in life?

Most definitely “YES”

Can someone in their 50’s who doesn’t know a note of music learn
to play guitar?

Absolutely, and they should!

Am I just trying to think positively? No, here’s the musical
facts of life:

Music is a language that anyone can learn, in fact learning to
play guitar latter in life has some distinct advantages.

(a) generally people at this stage of life know that you have to
take things s-l-o-w-l-y, there’s no hurry it’s all about
‘quality’ not ‘quantity’.

(b) most likely these people have some spare time that they can
devote to an interesting pass time of hobby without too many
distractions.

(c) there’s a BIG advantage learning to play guitar from the
beginning, if you learn it correctly you don’t have to spend
countless wasted years trying to un-learn bad habits!

With very few exceptions students in the 50 to 70 age group tend
to learn guitar for relaxation, rarely miss a lesson, and hardly
ever ‘drop out’ and are very highly motivated especially when
they start seeing results.

The truth is … you don’t have to stretch your fingers trying to
play impossible chord shapes – it’s the notes in the chord you
are trying to play and there’s heaps of easy ways to play chords
on the guitar, sometimes you only need one or two fingers, the
trick is to learn the language of music that way you will know
how ’spell’ chords and ultimately be able to design your own
chord shapes.

Here’s the question: “In A Song, I know that you play the 1,4,5
chords, but what if there are also minor chords in the song, how
do I know which minor chords to play?”

The best way to answer this is to understand how chords work, the
majority of guitarists learn chords in one of the following ways:

(a) a friend shows them a few chord shapes on the guitar

(b) they learn their chords from a guitar chord book

(c) they play chords form TAB but don’t know the names of the
chords they are playing (usually they don’t even know they are
playing chords)

or …

(d) the guitarists spends endless hours memorizing chord
construction formulas e.g., major: 1-3-5; minor 1-b3-5;
augmented: 1-3-#5 etc.

While all these methods teach you what to play the guitarist
never learns which chords work together and why; take for example
the guy or girl with the chord book, it doesn’t matter how many
chord shapes they learn if they don’t know which chords go
together and why.

So what is the best way to learn about chords?

By studying the language of music.

Step 1: Chord families – chords are not isolated groups of notes
they are created from scales; there are different types of chords
e.g., three note chords (triads); four note chords (scaletone
seventh chords) etc.

Generally the most common chord structures are created by
stacking the notes of a scale in thirds.

Here is an example of a chord family (triadic version) derived
from the key of G.

G scale: G – A – B – C – D – E – F# – G

Chord family key of G:

G – Am – Bm – C – D – Em – F#dim – G

Step 2: Identify the 1,4,5 chords – Many popular songs can be
reduced harmonically to three chords, most likely you have heard
about three chord tunes, essentially most three chord tunes
consist of the 1,4 and 5 chords (musicians call these chords the
primary chords).

Primary chords in the key of G:

1 = G

4 = C

5 = D

I arrived at this answer by assigning a number to each chord in
the key of G.

Like this

1 = G

2 = Am

3 = Bm

4 = C

5 = D

6 = Em

7 = F#dim

8 = G

Step 3: Identifying which minor chords to play in a song

(a) if a song has four chords there is a very strong chance the
fourth chord will be a minor chord, the problem is which minor
chord!

The answer here is simple it’s chord 6 in the chord family; chord
six is the relative minor to chord one.

What that means is that chord six represents a sound that is the
exact opposite of chord one; if you were to describe the sound of
chord one as ‘bright’ you would possibly describe the sound of
chord six as ‘dull’; if you were to describe the sound of chord
one as ‘happy’ you would might describe the sound of chord six as
’sad’.

Chord six is the most closely related chord to chord one however,
it has a chord texture ( or musical mood)exactly the opposite to
chord one.

(b) if you are searching for a minor chord that goes before chord
five it’s almost always chord two.

(c) if you have tried the 1-6-4-5 progression and you are not
convinced it’s 100% correct for your particular musical situation
try the 1-3-4-5 progression.

Bonus tip: One other chord progression that pops up quite often
is another variation of the 1-6-4-5.

Try this 1-6-2-5 and compare the musical ‘mood’ of this
progression to the 1-6-4-5 chances are it will be the progression
you are looking for.

These days I have learned to ask a few more questions as 99% of
the time the student does not really want to play classical
guitar in fact most of them haven’t heard much classical guitar
playing at all, I generally find that they either (a) want to
play single note melodies or (b) play finger style accompaniment
of the guitar.

In this article I will focus on the finger style accompaniment
type of guitar playing.

Guitar techniques for finger style

Essentially the left hand fingering of your chords (I’m assuming
you are a right handed player) will primarily remain the same as
if you were strumming although sometimes you won’t have to use as
many fingers (that’s good news).

Finger style skills to learn (right hand)

Most of the techniques will be done with your right hand.

Basically your thumb will play either the fourth, fifth or sixth
string depending on what chord you are playing e.g., if you are
playing a ‘D’ chord your thumb will play the fourth string whilst
if you were playing an ‘A’ chord your thumb would play the fifth
string.

The idea is for your thumb to play a bass note of the same letter
name as the chord you are playing.

Here is a simple table for you to practice, I’m going to call it
our ‘rule of thumb’.

A, Am, A7 = 5th sting

B, Bm, B7 = 5th

C, Cm, C7 = 5th

D, Dm, D7 = 4th

E, Em, E7 = 6th

F, Fm, F7 = 6th

G, Gm, G7 = 6th

Your remaining right hand fingers will play as follows;

First finger (right hand ) plays the third string

Second finger (right hand) plays the second string

Third finger (right hand) plays the first string

These fingers play the same strings regardless of whatever chord
you are playing; it’s just the thumb that changes; I know it
looks a lot more complicated than that and it can be more
complicated however if you are just staring and want to get a
‘feel’ for what is involved in this style of guitar playing this
is a great way to get started.

How to practice:

Start by playing only with your right hand, no left hand
fingering, begin by playing the following:

Thumb plays sixth string; first finger plays third string; second
finger plays second string; third finger plays first string;
second finger plays second string; first finger plays third
string.

Repeat this sequence over and over preferably while watching
television, your fingers will do all the necessary repetitive
work while your eyes will be watching the television all the time
you will be become more comfortable playing this style of guitar.

You will need to learn the following guitar skills

Finger style skills to learn (left hand)

* hammer-on’s

* pull-off’s

* slides

How long will it take? The basic guitar skills will only take a
few weeks, however since you will be using the ‘pads’ of your
right hand fingers you will need to allow time for your right
hand fingers to develop calluses, you will achieve the best
results by many short practice sessions rather than long sessions
particularly when you are starting out.

Over the years I had gained quite a reputation as a versatile
guitarist who could play many styles of music authentically;
little did I know that this little boy was about to give my
reputation a bit of a serious battering.

While our band was playing the young lad walked onstage and asked
me if I could play “Happy Birthday”; I was busy playing and said
O.K. hoping that he would soon forget about it and the evening
could proceed without any more requests from the little guy; this
was not going to be the case!

During the next bracket out of the corner of my eye I could see
the young boy heading for the bandstand and sure enough he asked
me again when we were going to play “Happy Birthday”; I replied
’soon’ thinking he’ll soon tire of asking.

As the night progressed this little fellow made several trips to
the bandstand each time I tried to avoid the inevitable;
eventually he brought reinforcements with him (his little sister)
“can you play “Happy Birthday” for my little sister?” he asked
politely. At that moment one of the band members recognized the
little girl as the daughter of the people who had booked us.

Now I knew we were in trouble … no “Happy Birthday” no pay!

You may be wondering why I had gone to so much trouble trying to
avoid playing this simple song; the reason was I didn’t know how
to play it!

Yes, here was this guitarist who could play chicken’ pickin’
licks for country; rock solos and dance music but couldn’t play a
simple melody.

I eventually ended up being cornered by the whole family; with
mum, dad, and three children all listening intently I totally
mangled “Happy Birthday”, boy, was it embarrassing, not even the
composer would have recognized his own song based on my
rendition!

As I walked off stage to the sound of my own feet and packed up,
red faced with my reputation in tatters, wishing I could crawl
inside my guitar case I was determined to never let this happen
again. It sometimes takes an incident like this to REALLY learn
what you should be learning.

It’s simple isn’t it? People want to hear tunes not scales or
arpeggios; sure guitar players will be impressed with your
ability to ’sweep pick’ but when it’s someone’s birthday they
couldn’t care less it you can play all of Van Halen’s Eruption
solo they just want to hear Happy Birthday.

So you don’t come face-to-face with the same type of embarrassing
situation here’s Happy Birthday.

I’ve broken the tune into small easy to remember sections, learn
each section and then link all the parts together and very soon
you will be playing the entire song.

Happy Birthday

part 1
—————-
—————-
—————-
—————-
-3–3–5–3–
—————-

part 2
————-
————-
————-
–3–2—–
————-
————-

part 3
—————-
—————-
—————-
—————-
-3–3–5–3–
—————-

part 4
————-
————-
————-
–5–3—–
————-
————-

part 5
————-
————-
————-
————-
–3–3—–
————-

part 6
—————
—————
–5—-2——
————3–
—————
—————

part 7
————
————
————
–2———
——-5—-
————

part 8
————-
————-
–3—-3—-
————-
————-
————-

part 9
————-
————-
–2———-
——-3—–
————-
————-

part 10
————–
————–
————–
—5—-3—
————–
————–

Happy Birthday may not be your favorite song, but it is top of
the charts once a year for everyone, it’s also important to play
songs in the key (pitch) that people are familiar with otherwise
they will have trouble singing along with the song; I’ve
presented Happy Birthday in the key of ‘F’ which is the most
popular key for that song.

Since pre-historic times ever since the first men and women began
creating music human beings have always be trying to push the
harmonic boundaries; in fact the one constant reoccurring pattern
that can be found in the entire history of music is the human
intellect’s constant search for more complex harmonies.

Harmonies that sounded dissonant or odd fifty or twenty years ago
go totally unnoticed today, as the public hear these sounds more
often we accept them as part of the overall musical soundscape.

In the sixties musicians everywhere felt the need to break with
traditional harmonic progressions all field of music were
effected by the ‘new’ sounds.

Musicians such as Burt Bacharach working in the popular music
scene and Antonio Carlos Jobim composing Brazilian music were
just some of the new breed of writers continuing the quest for
new and interesting harmonic progressions that reflected the
social climate of the day.

Around 1957 the guitar grew in unprecedented popularity; of
course the guitar (both electric and acoustic versions) had been
a popular musical instrument for many years however, it was the
Beatles and early rock and roll that created the worldwide
explosion of popularity for the guitar; the guitar’s contribution
was a reemergence of folk music as well as the newfound
popularity of the minor pentatonic scale.

Chord progressions derived from the pentatonic scale were one of
the most significant musical breakthrough’s of 1960’s as
musicians searching for a way of breaking with traditional
harmony found the pentatonic progressions produced chords with
a new sense of harmonic freedom and that the pentatonic
progressions could also be integrated with traditional chords.

Pentatonic Chord Progressions overview:

Interesting and fresh sounding chord progression can be created
by using the notes of the minor pentatonic scale as root notes
for chords.

If we use the notes of an “E” minor pentatonic scale for our
example we would have the following notes.

E minor pentatonic: E – G – A – B – D – E

Using these notes as root notes we can create chord progressions
like these …

Ex 1.

Em /// | D /// | A /// | A /// |

Ex 2.

Em /// | D /// | Am /// | Am /// |

Ex 3.

E /// | D /// | A /// | A /// |

Notice how in these examples we can use major or minor chord
textures; the important point to remember is that we are using
notes from the minor pentatonic scale to function as root notes;
the type of chordal texture we use with this root note will
depend on the musical effect we are wanting to achieve.

Some more examples …

Ex 4.

E / G / | A / E / |E / G / | A / E / |

Ex 5.

E / G / | A / B / |E / G / | A / B / |

Ex 6.

E / D / | A / B / |E / D / | A / B / |

How do these chords compare with traditional harmonization of a
major scale?

Compare our ‘new’ pentatonic chord progressions with the triadic
version of the ‘E’ major scale.

E – F#m – G#m – A – B – C#m – D#dim – E

As you can see certain chords are found in both the pentatonic
and triadic progressions e.g., ‘E’; ‘A’ & ‘B’.

Which scale would we use to solo over the pentatonic chord
progressions?

The minor pentatonic scale will work well over all
the progressions regardless of whether the chords played in the
progression are major or minor; there’s something really
intriguing about minor scales being played over major chords, in
theory it should not work but in practice it produces a neat
blues effect.

Before I go any further and get into the actual playing I’d like
to include a quote form Ray Charles that sums it up nicely …

“I like to think that when I sing a song, I can let you know all
about the heartbreak, struggle, lies and kicks in the butt I’ve
gotten over the years for being black and everything else,
without actually saying a word about it.” – Ray Charles

Now on to your two note blues solo (authentic blues)

Step 1: Pick a key – I’m going to use the key of “E” a typical
blues key.

Step 2: Pick two strong notes – the most obvious choice would be
“E” and “B” the first and fifth notes in the key of “E”.

Remember, it’s not what we play it’s HOW we play it so let’s take
these two notes over to the guitar for some blues playing.

Now you are probably thinking there’s no way can this work with
only two notes but let’s just see how this develops.

Step 3: create a rhythm – I’m going to use the phrase “I like the
blues”; you can use any phrase, the idea is to use words since we
already know the inherent rhythm of the words we use in everyday
speech we will immediately have a great place to start that will
add a natural ’singing’ quality to you guitar playing rather than
the potentially mechanical or contrived approach of trying to
play blues from TAB or standard musical notation e.g., semibreve,
minim, crotchet etc.

Step 4: Select the melodic line (pitch) for your rhythm – I’ll
play “B, B, E, E” ; not very inspiring and certainly not the
blues …yet!

If you play this series of notes on the guitar exactly as I have
written it no matter how you sang “I like the blues” in your head
it would not come out sounding like the blues.

But if you …

Step 5: Play unison notes on a variety of strings it will all
come together as a very natural vocal approach.

(a) start on the note at the second fret third string and slide
up to the note “B” at the fourth fret; that our first “B” the
note that goes with the word “I”

————-
————-
–2-s-4—
————-
————-
————-

(b) play your next note “B” as an open second string; notice how
this note has a different tone than the first and this “B” note
goes with our second word “like”.

———
–0—–
———
———
———
———

(c) play your next note “E” as the first string open for the word
“the”

–0—–
———
———
———
———
———

(d) our last note “E” will be played on the second string, fifth
fret and I’ll also add a bit of blues embellishment like I did
with the first note by sliding up to that note from the third
fret; this effect will work nicely for our last word “blues”.

————
–3-s-5–
————
————
————
————

Now here is your two note blues solo.

count in (1 2 3)
“I like the blues” 2 3 4 1 2 3
“I like the blues” 2 3 4 1 2 3
“I like the blues” 2 3 4 1 2 3
“I like the blues” 2 3 4 1 2 3
“I like the blues” 2 3 4 1 2 3
“I like the blues” 2 3 4 1 2 3

Make sure you are tapping your foot all the time not just where
the count is marked.

You have a three beat count before you start playing then the
accompaniment will come in on the word “blues”, here is the chord
progression that will work behind your solo.

E /// |E /// | E /// | E /// |
A /// |A /// | E /// | E /// |
B /// |B /// | E /// | E /// |

I do hope you enjoy your two note blues try other notes and
phrases keep in mind it’s the space in between the notes that
matters that’s what invites the listener into your music.

What is it with these blues legends? What is it that they know
or do that other guitarists don’t?

It can’t be their guitars – heaps of guitar players play the
exact same type of guitars that their heroes play and they sure
don’t get the same sound.

It can’t be theoretical knowledge - actually the blues players
only use very basic musical resources just the basic scales most
guitarists learn at school e.g., the minor pentatonic and blues
scales.

It can’t be their amps and effect pedals – the best blues players
don’t rely on elaborate electronic enhancement for their sound;
for them it’s all about the feel therefore they use only the most
basic guitar and amp setups and very rarely do they ever use
effect pedals.

The legendary blues players go for raw emotion, you gotta play
from the heart and get your guitar singing, that’s how you
really play the blues …there’s nothing fancy about it but you
do have to learn the blues guitar tricks.

What the top blues players know is … less is more! The trick is
to be able to say more with any one note than most other players
can say with a dozen!

Here’s how they squeeze the most juice of one single note.

By playing unisons … a unison is simply the same note repeated
on an adjacent string, For example: Play the G on the 1st string
at the third fret, then play the same note (G) on the second
string at the eighth fret.

Unison G

–3—-
—–8-
——-
——-
——-
——-

Play these notes together or alternate them. Try playing the G
(on the first string) then slide or bend into the other G on the
second string. Usually sliding or bending from two frets below
your target note.

Here is a list of some unison options for the notes in the G
blues scale. In the following list the letter is the name of the
note, the first number is the string, the second number refers to
the fret.

Here’s how the code works: G/1/3 refers to the note G played on
the first string at the third fret.

G/1/3 = G/2/8 = G/3/12

Bb/1/6 = Bb/2/11 = Bb/3/15

D/2/3 = D/3/7 = D/4/12

F/2/6 = F/3/10 = F/4/15

C/3/5 = C/4/10 = C/5/15

Unisons can be playing on any note of the blues patterns
(scales). On the second string the unison note is found on the
third string, etc. Of course any scale can be used to practice
unisons. Try finding these unisons and working them into your
solos.