Blues Shuffle (Guitar I)

Basic Blues shuffle in A. Brief explanation of the rest stroke and the shuffle rhythm.

Chord Progressions and Strumming Patterns (Guitar I)

Guitar I students are working on moving between chords using varied strumming patterns.

The strum patterns that we are currently exploring:

We are going to apply these strumming patterns to the following chord progressions

1. G--Em--C--D
2. G--B7--C--G
3. Em--Am--C--D
4. G--D--B7--Em
5. G-C-D(7)
6. G-D-C
7. Em-Am-B7
8. D-G-A(7)

These are just common chord progressions. These chords come up time and time again in many styles of music. You do yourself a favor by becoming familiar with them, however don't hesitate to experiment with your own combinations.

Blues and the start of variation (Guitar II)

We have been playing through the blues (in the key of G) for a few classes. We are now exploring variations to the basic blues progression and the addition of chords such as the diminished 7th.

Here are 3 variations to a simple G Blues progression:

The final photo is a diagram for the diminished chord. This illustrates the chord with a 6th string root and a 5th string root.

G Blues

You have each made a video recording of a blues accompaniment in the key of G. If you are looking to practice your blues scale and develop solo ideas with the scale you should play along with your video. I am also posting an audio clip of a slow blues progression in the key of G that might also help you generate ideas.

Slow Blues in G 

Above is a diagram of the 5 basic pentatonic shapes (these are shown in the key of G).