The Blues Guitar's Influence On Music

Of course to people like W. C. Handy who were brought up singing in church, the piano was the expected instrumental accompaniment to their songs. But the guitar is portable and was forever popular so it had to have a place in blues and jazz. Blues guitar players like twelve string guitarist Leadbelly and future electric guitar player B.B. King were making sure the guitar would be a basic part of the blues. Other blues guitarists made their living in smoky saloons playing slide guitar with a bottle neck or the blade of a knife to fret the notes.

We talk about our blues tradition and how blues players have to pay their dues and such, but the truth is all blues songs sound much the same. This relieves blues guitar players and singers of the burden of making up new, totally original blues music. If they did nobody would want to listen. But the simplicity of the blues is what makes it great . . . more at . . . Learning How To Play Blues Guitar - The Basics

After the Second World War youthful artists like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were wrapping the blues in a new envelope called "rock'n'roll" and the players of the electric blues guitar like B.B. King were heralding the arrival of the lead guitar, soon to be a great attraction for both musicians and audiences. Throughout the evolution of the blues the electric guitar had always been used for solos in jazz bands but now it competed with the singer for the awareness of the listeners.

The blues can be played in any key that takes your heart desires and comes in three central forms: eight bars, for example "Heartbreak Hotel", sixteen bars like "Saint James Infirmary" and twelve bars like "St. Louis Blues". For some reason the twelve bar blues form is way more singer-friendly and popular with audiences than the other two, and it is the base of many great songs beyond the blues idiom.

Learn more about blues guitar at Learn To Play A Guitar For Free

If you go searching the internet you will find that the blues scales are just your common major and minor scales except that the third, fifth and seventh notes are played flat. However, you may be astonished to learn that blues players managed for centuries lacking knowledge about European musical theory. They learnt to sing and play from their families and friends just as many of the fresh white blues players of the nineteen sixties learnt from imitating the artists they heard on records.
And this is where the blues takes another course. After years of imitating their idols something odd happened to the white blues guitar players in Britain and the USA. They developed their own authentic, earliest styles. The elder blues players even began using the new arrangements of classic songs and adopting some of the unbluesy musical innovations introduced by young white guitarists like Eric Clapton. So the beat goes on. An alien culture influences American popular music and in turn gets fresh input from a new generation of guitar players from all over the world.

The Electric Guitar In Musical History
During the Big Band Era of the 1930's and '40's, the guitar players with the orchestras found that they needed some way of being heard above the sound of the rest of the instruments. This is where the electric guitar as we know it got its first big break.

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