12 Bar Blues in E for Beginners!

Description

In this Tutorial Series we are going to learning how to play a 12 Bar Blues in E!

Let's start by establishing a simple rhythm to use. As in many "blues" songs the rhythm is an eight-note triplet pattern. That means you will have 3 ("triplets") evenly spaced counts occur on every beat. This leads to a background counting pattern of:

1 & uh 2 & uh 3 & uh 4 & uh (repeat) for every measure.

In this example we will play notes on the beat "number", skip the "&" and then play notes on the "uh". This leads to a "swing" type rhythm that is very typical for "blues" (and also "jazz" and/or "swing") style songs.