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Killer Blues Guitar With Just Two Notes

By Mike Hayes | July 5, 2010

When you hear a really good blues player the first thing you
notice is how few notes they play; for these players it’s all
about connecting with their audience and getting an emotional
response from the listener, it has nothing to do with how many
scales they know or how fast they can play.

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.

Topics: Blues Scales, Guitar Tips | No Comments »

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