Blues Guitar

First of all, let's define Blues. It is a musical folk style which was developed by African American artists from the 19th century up to the early 20th century. Blues guitar also had a significant role in the evolution of styles such as jazz, rock, rhythm & blues, and hip-hop. A common characteristic is the 12-bar blues progression. The three major blues styles are: the Mississippi-Deep South Blues, which is the oldest style and the guitar was used roughly (guitar playing tends to be more percussive); the Texas Blues, which was a more refined type of music and the guitar was essential (it provided sophisticated variations); and the East Coast Blues, which was developed in the southern states of the USA and had elegance and sophistication. In this last style, the guitar was played with a high degree of organization and structure, and also presented an element of ragtime.

Blues is strongly connected to the guitar. In the Learn and Master Guitar DVD series, you may find yourself playing some blues music. There are several types that are used for blues, but the most commonly used are the flat-top steel-string guitar, the resonator guitar, the 12-string guitar, and the electric guitar. The flat-top steel-string guitar is quite similar to a classical guitar, but its body is usually larger than a classical guitar's body. It has a narrower and reinforced neck, and stronger structural design when compared to other sizes of steel-string guitars. All these characteristics were implemented in order to make the instrument strong enough to withstand the additional tension generated by steel strings (which offer a brighter tone).

The resonator guitar is also called resophonic or Dobro guitar. It looks a lot like the flat-top steel-string guitar, but the sound is produced by a resonator, which has the original purpose of amplifying the sound. With the advent of the electrical amplification, the resonator's main characteristic was largely superseded, but it still has a very distinct sound to count on its favor. This type of guitar can have one resonator cone or three of them. The 3-cone resonator guitar presents two cones on the left (one above the other) and the other cone in the right, next to the first two cones. The 12-string guitar is characterized by six courses with two strings each. The highest two courses are tuned in unison, but the other four courses are tuned in octaves.

The electric guitar can be constructed with a solid, semi-hollow, or hollow body. This type of guitar produces very little sound unless it has amplification. So, the vibration of the steel strings needs to be converted by electromagnetic pickups into electrical signals that are sent to an amplifier. In addition, there are two main kinds of pickups, the single coil and the double coil (also known as humbuckers). In an electric guitar, if you join lower fingerboard action to electrical amplification, you can make some techniques possible, for example, use of legato through pull-offs and hammer ons, tapping, volume swells, psycharmonics, and use of tremolo arms or effect pedals. Furthermore, blues guitarists like to make use of techniques such as slide, which creates a glissando or "Hawaiian" effect by using generally bottle necks, and note bending.