What Is The Blues?
It’s a good question… and hard to answer because there are a lot of ways you can look at it.
For one thing, there’s the lyrical side of the blues – the words and the emotions that come from a blues singer sharing that little piece of their soul…
There are the circumstances around the blues – the intense heartache of a love lost, the raging jealousy when a lover did wrong, or the overwhelming joy of being lost and seeing light…
If you ask 10 different people “what makes the blues… blues,” I’m sure you’ll get 10 different answers.
But that’s not what we’re here about…
We’re talking about how you can play the blues on your guitar in a completely masterful way.
Not like the guy who sits in once a week at open jam night and then puts the guitar in the corner…
Or the guy who picks up the guitar once in a while when he has a spare moment…
No, I’m talking about playing the blues like you live it every day… where your command of your guitar is so complete that you can choose the sounds you want to make and your fingers will just… take care of it for you.
And I’m not going to tell you this is easy and can be learned with some “trick” or “secret” in a half an hour.
You’ve probably heard or read that before, and my guess is that you’ve long since figured out that it doesn’t work that way.
The truth is that while the concept is simple, where you may have been let down in the past is in the execution.
After all, BB himself has said that “the blues is the easiest to learn and the hardest to master.”
So let’s go back to my question… what is the blues?
