Five Reasons Why You Should Learn Blues Guitar

So, you’re an aspiring guitarist and you’re wondering whether you should learn blues guitar? Maybe you have an image of blues guitarists as old men wearing battered old suits and hats singing about how their wife left them, they lost all of their money at cards and their cat died? And why do they keep singing about how they “woke up this morning”??

Well, put all of your preconceptions aside – here are five reasons why you should learn blues guitar whatever style you’re interested in:

1. Blues is a really easy style to get started with and sound really good. A lot of blues music is based around a simple chord pattern called the 12-bar blues which only uses three chords. It’s really easy to learn and sounds great and can give you enough to play a lot of songs.
2. Blues lead guitar can also be pretty easy to start with. You can play a lot of blues solos just using the “blues scale”, which only has six notes! And it’s easy to sound great playing the blues scale over the 12-bar blues as there’s very little danger of notes clashing and sounding “wrong”.
3. Rock and jazz music both grew out of blues music and retain a lot of the elements of blues music, so in fact by studying blues guitar you are in fact also studying the basics of jazz and rock guitar and anything you learn about the blues will also be useful when playing these genres.
4. Blues music provides a “common language” for a lot of musicians. Most musicians, whatever style they play in, will know how to play a 12-bar blues pattern. This is why the 12-bar blues is often used in jam sessions, so that musicians of any level can join in and play together. It’s a great ice breaker when meeting a new musician for the first time to be able to jam over a 12-bar blues together.
5. Finally, blues music is really accessible and even people who aren’t blues aficionados can enjoy listening to it, so you can certainly use your blues playing skills to entertain and impress your friends and family.

So, I hope that I’ve convinced you that blues guitar is worth spending some time learning. If you want to find out more about blues guitar, check out this website: Learn Blues Guitar.