The blues is many things—a collection of styles, an approach to the guitar, a certain musical feeling, a common 12-bar structure, and more. The work of blues guitarists, from pioneers like Robert Johnson and Etta Baker to contemporary performers like Jontavious Willis, inspires music fans and acoustic guitarists alike. Here you’ll learn key concepts, songs, and techniques for playing the blues.
In this acoustic guitar lesson you'll learn a bunch of blues-based turnarounds in different keys—great moves to have at your fingertips when playing the blues.
If you like your blues with funky drive, listening to and learning Burnside’s riffs and licks will get your mojo working. Learn to play in his raw percussive style.
A lesson on how to play fingerstyle blues in this popular open tuning, using examples from classic songs by Elizabeth Cotten, Robert Johnson, and more.
For a gentle introduction to ragtime, I composed a simple G-major instrumental, “Davis Street Rag,” in which the syncopation always occurs in a predictable place, the “and” of beat three.
Widely known as the Father of the Delta Blues, Charley Patton is generally recognized as one of the most influential blues artists active in the first decades of the 20th century. Although no single individual can be credited with inventing the Delta blues style, Patton was one of the first…
The Saturday night lineup at the 1963 Philadelphia Folk Festival included Elizabeth Cotten, Mike Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, and Mississippi John Hurt. In the audience that night was 12-year-old John Miller. The music that made the biggest impression on him was that of Hurt, so much so that weeks later,…
Beyond the blues techniques, there is a seriously bittersweet tone to Davis’ guitar on “Cocaine Blues.” It seems to come from a very deep place in his soul.
Sometime in the 1920s, a peculiar form of blues emerged that was substantially different from the better-known varieties. The style is commonly known today as talking blues. Despite the moniker, however, it rarely employs the 12-bar chord progression that is typical of most blues music. Many talking-blues songs are instead…
Listening to players like Mississippi John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis, and John Fahey will get your ear accustomed to fingerpicking blues. In this lesson, you’ll apply the techniques they’re known for to a 12-bar blues, but you can also use them to play ragtime, early jazz, and folk.
The study of prewar blues includes a heavy amount of time playing in first position—between the nut and the first four frets of your guitar. However, as you learn more and more songs, you might be asking yourself, “What comes next?”
A comprehensive guitar method, songbook, and narrative anthology by Steve James, available to champions of this site or to purchase at store.AcousticGuitar.com.
Accordion music of the early 20th century might seem an odd source of inspiration for a fingerstyle guitarist, but not for the San Francisco Bay Area musician Craig Ventresco, with his vast musical knowledge of that bygone era. I have long admired Ventresco’s arrangement of “An Operatic Rag,” a 1910…
The duo of Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy recorded the song in 1929, and it became best known through the recomposed electric version that the rock band Led Zeppelin released in 1971.
