Suggestions for Song Book

dwparker

Bluesologist
I am just starting BGU v2. I am a firm believer in always learning songs. So what would be appropriate song material to complement the first five lessons of BGUv2? Thanks.
 

Scotty R

Blues Newbie
That's a good question and one I've been thinking about as well.
Would be awesome to develop a framework for rating blues and blue/rock songs in terms of degree of difficulty, or mapping to Griff's lesson content. Easy to say, and I imagine very hard to do as it's so subjective.

I do recall a blog post years ago where he did this,
https://bluesguitarunleashed.com/blog/some-recipes-for-blues-songs/

Justin Sandercoe at JustinGuitar has made an attempt at this, and it's pretty good. He's got a couple of hundred songs that he's featured, and taught on his site and you can sort them by 9 different degrees of difficulty. He also maps some of the songs to his lessons, whereby some songs are from his beginner series and are rated as beginner songs. What also helps is that he'll separates some of the solos as they might be at a more advanced level than the song. Eg. Crossroads.
He covers a lot of the genres, so you have to know what you want, and what you don't

Fender Play has tried to do something similar, but you need to pony up some $$'s to see the good stuff.
It's mostly oriented to beginners though, and covers a lot of genres.

Other than that I not aware that there's any song ranking within the blues, or blues-rock space.
Does that help?
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
In the first 5 lessons you have learned 7th chords, 12 bar format, 9th chord substitutions, little chords, & the blues half step.
Once you can hear the 12 bar changes, (and I mean REALLY hear, feel and know when they are coming) if you learn nothing else in BGU, and you can strum reasonably well, you can comp along with thousands of 12 bar blues ( and rock) songs.

Songs like :
Born In Chicago
Dust My Broom
Further On Up The Road
Tore Down (with a quick change)

With minor modifications:
When the house is rockin

and on, and on....
 

dwparker

Bluesologist
In the first 5 lessons you have learned 7th chords, 12 bar format, 9th chord substitutions, little chords, & the blues half step.
Once you can hear the 12 bar changes, (and I mean REALLY hear, feel and know when they are coming) if you learn nothing else in BGU, and you can strum reasonably well, you can comp along with thousands of 12 bar blues ( and rock) songs.

Songs like :
Born In Chicago
Dust My Broom
Further On Up The Road
Tore Down (with a quick change)

With minor modifications:
When the house is rockin

and on, and on....

What these lessons are doing for me is really helping my with my timing, no new chords. I actually started embellishing and substituting chords from lesson one, ( Major 7ths anyone? I like'em even if they aren't common in blues), and sliding into the chord from a half step down with lesson 2. But coming from a world of straight quarter note comping, or maybe the latin rythm, NOT playing on the first note has been a challenge this week. Anyways...

It seems like I should take your advice almost as a form of ear training, correct? Listen to other songs, take what I am hearing, then try and figure it out in the 12 bar format and play them myself.
 
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MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
What these lessons are doing for me is really helping my with my timing, no new chords. I actually started embellishing and substituting chords from lesson one, ( Major 7ths anyone? I like'em even if they aren't common in blues), and sliding into the chord from a half step down with lesson 2. But coming from a world of straight quarter note comping, or maybe the latin rythm, NOT playing on the first note has been a challenge this week. Anyways...

It seems like I should take your advice almost as a form of ear training, correct? Listen to other songs, take what I am hearing, then try and figure it out in the 12 bar format and play them myself.

Absolutely! Feeling the chord changes should (and will) become second nature so that You no longer really have to actively listen for them. I know it sounds corny, but they just become part of your being. I've played guitar for most of my live so I'm not saying that I NEVER get lost, but it's extremely rare.
 

dwparker

Bluesologist
Makes sense, thanks Mike. I think I am going to play these exercises in different keys plus start doing some transcriptions from songs.
 
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