Don't Be Like Beethoven
Published: Fri, 12/16/22
It's really no different if you play blues. At some point, someone's going to say, "hey man, you play guitar – come on, let's hear something!" And if you're there by yourself, and you don't sing, or can't remember the words, or only know how to play licks over the chords, you're kind of out of luck. As Mike Bloomfield once said of the people who would come to his solo acoustic shows and shout out "Super Session!" from the back of the crowd, "What am I gonna do, play the solos?" Or, as the great fingerstyle jazz guitarist Gene Bertoncini once mused, "Beethoven...he didn't play any tunes, did he?"
It's good to know some tunes. And when it comes to fingerstyle blues, it's particularly good to know some eight-bar blues. They tend to have pretty distinctive chord progressions, and even more distinctive melodies, and they make a great change-up from the twelve-bar form. Bottom line, you'll still be playing blues, but you'll sound a whole lot less noodley, especially if you pick the right ones. The right tunes can also help you bridge the gap from blues to other genres: swing and jazz musicians tend to know songs like "St. James Infirmary" and "Trouble In Mind," country, bluegrass and Western Swing musicians will likely know "Trouble In Mind" and "Sitting On Top Of The World," and blues-rockers and gospel musicians alike should be familiar with "Nobody's Fault But Mine," which is definitely a Venn diagram worth thinking about.
If you don't have a few eight-bar blues in your repertoire, I propose you make that one of your missions for 2023. In today's Youtube lesson, I demonstrate five essential tunes, including the ones listed above, and suggest some additional reasons to spend some time with them. You can find the lesson at the link below:
The Five Eight Bar Blues Tunes You Should Learn In 2023
More soon,
David
P.S. Yes, Virginia, I do teach all five of the songs from today's Youtube lesson inside my membership, The Fingerstyle Five. Learn more and sign up at https://www.fretboardconfidential.com/