Now that I have sooooo many posts on this blog about soloing and scales, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that you’ll spend most of your time playing rhythm using chords. It’s also true that you can’t really put together a coherent solo unless you can instantly and effortlessly find the chord tones of the underlying harmony. Put simply: rhythm and chords are even more important than scales and solos. It’s time to focus on them specifically.
Let’s start with rhythm. In a blues context (or pretty much any modern western music context — i.e. anything other than classical, martial, or polka music) the backbeat is king. The backbeat is either beats two and four in a bar of 4/4, or the “ands” if you are playing eighth notes.
The Backbeat
That last sentence above might seem a little confusing at first. Just remember that playing four quarter notes in a bar of 4/4 at 100 BPM sounds exactly the same as playing eighth notes at 50 BPM. At higher BPMs you tend to think of the backbeat as beats 2 and 4. At slower BPM (like with a slow blues) you tend to think of it as the “ands”.
The first step is to get used to simply hearing the backbeat in 4/4 time (by far the most common time signature in all forms of western music).
The easiest and best way to get good at this is to regularly practice with a metronome, and always (or at least usually) practice with it only clicking on the backbeat.
Counting in with clicks on the backbeat
The first drill doesn’t even use your guitar. First set your metronome to a nice slow tempo (like 50 BPM). We’ll now learn to hear the clicks as beats two and four.
We are going to practice first listening to the clicks for a bit, then counting out loud: One … Two, …, One, two, three, four!
You’ve probably heard this a million times before as live bands get started on songs: the drummer or band leader says, “Uh one … two … uh one two three four” — then the band starts playing perfectly in synch with one another. Without the count in, it’s almost impossible to all start together in synch.
Confusingly, the first two counts are usually half time. That is, the first time you hear the word “two” it’s actually on beat three! As weird as this seems at first, it will eventually become second nature.
Listen to this moderately succesful musician demonstrate the process:
(A minor but important detail is that it’s common to start the count with a “pickup” bar. They often start counting on the “and” of beat four in the previous bar. That’s why you often hear “Uh one … two ….” — the “uh” is the “and” of beat four in the previous bar.)
All of this discussion may seem unnecessary, but it isn’t nearly as trivial to do as it sounds. (At first, anyway. It quickly becomes second nature.)
Here’s a five minute video of me trying to demonstrate and explain the process:
Practice starting and stopping your metronome and starting a count like this. Keep at it until it’s second nature. You’ll likely struggle at first, but it should become easy fairly quickly. Just remember to nod your head, tap your foot, or shake your booty at double time and start the count between clicks. Seriously: it’s way easier if you move your body in some way.
Harmony: Playing over the blues changes
By now you should be familiar with the blues form. To review, a twelve bar blues comprises three “systems” (rows) of four bars. In it’s simplest form:
/ I7 / % / % / % /
/ IV7 / % / I7 / % /
/ V7 / IV7 / I7 / % (or V7) /
It starts with four bars of the “I chord”. In an A blues, this would be A7. Lyrically, this first system can be thought of as a “sentence” that is further divided into a “call” and “response” with the call in the first two bars, and the response in bars three and four. Something like: “I woke up this morning — oh Lord I felt so bad.” The response (“Oh Lord …") starts in bar 3.
Then it has another call and response “sentence” in bars 4 through 8. It’s likely very similar to the first system: “Something woke me this morning — dear Lord I hurt so bad.”
The last four bars are called the “turnaround” and tend to tie things together. Perhaps something like “My baby done left me! I just feel so doggone bad.”
We are now going to practice playing dom7 chords over a full 12 bar blues progression.
Hearing the changes
When I first started, I really struggled even hearing the underlying chords change. My brain was so preoccupied thinking about chords and scales and shapes and rhythms that I was no longer listening to what the band (or backing track) was actually playing. This is a serious problem! You can’t play well without listening (and reacting) to the underlying harmony.
Believe it or not, your ears are already trained to hear the changes — you’ve been hearing the 12 bar blues progression since you were a small child (whether you realized it or not). Your subconscious already recognizes the movement from the I7 to the IV7, and the turnaround from the V7 to the IV7 to the I7. The trick is to move this to your conscious mind.
The next sequence of exercises are intended to help you “hear the changes” in a blues progression. It’s important to hear and anticipate the chord changes in any song, but the nice thing about the blues is that the chords are always quite predictable and familiar.
Exercise 1: Rubato changes
The first exercise is to simply find the I7, IV7, and V7 chords in local groupings on the fretboard. It pays to keep things as simple as possible and progress in baby steps. Start with just one shape for each chord, no metronome, and just strum the first beat of each measure:
Eventually, you want to be able to easily find the I7, IV7, and V7 chords anywhere on the neck, but at first its good to practice them close together, with all three chords in roughly the same location on the neck. Try to visualize how the root note is moving across the strings as the chords change.
Exercise 2: Metronome on the backbeat
Next, practice to a metronome on beats two and four. Keep it simple at first and just play “Freddie Green” style with simple quarter notes:
Exercise 3: Playing to a backing track
The real fun starts when you start accompanying others in a band situation. Since most of us don’t have a band willing to help you practice 24x7, it’s helpful to find backing tracks online or to create your own with apps like Garage Band or iReal Pro.
When you are playing on your own (rubato or two a metronome or drum track) its easy to get lost and forget where you are in a progression. Playing to a backing track will keep you honest.
Remember to listen to the chords playing in the background. Learn to anticipate the changes. Repeat this exercise as much as possible until you never get lost and always know where you are in the progression.