In fact, a characteristic of his style, like Davis, was to move away from the standard Travis style basses and use the thumb in combination with a finger to create stunning runs on single strings, which may be the treble or bass strings, or indeed, all of them! The staple technique he used was the alternating bass, but he could also play monotonic style as well. Blind Boy Fuller learned a lot from Reverend Gary Davis, who in turn was taught by Blind Willie Walker, who was generally acknowledged to be the 'best that ever did it'. Both will really level up your blues skills.The Alternating Bass Piedmont Fingerstyle Technique Of Blind Boy Fullerįuller hailed from South Carolina, which was the home of some of the finest blues guitar players ever to make blues music. If you really like playing the blues on ukulele, I’d highly recommend taking a look at Al Wood’s How To Play Blues Ukulele ebook and the Blues Mini Course from Uke Like The Pros. As always, give it a try, start slowly, practice a bit, and see if it fits into things you already play. ![]() So we have found a number of ways to change things around in a 12 bar blues. Or play around the A string, taking your finger off (0210) or adding your little finger to the 3 rd fret (0213), and lifting it back off. Or leave that finger where it is and take the other two off (0010). The G7 (0212) can be changed by quickly lifting your finger off the E string (0202) and back down. I have found there is more scope for varying things if you start with F (2010) and then use your ring finger on the C string, 2 nd & 3 rd frets again (2210 & 2310), much the same as it did for the A & D7 chords above. Moving on to the F chord, if you play F7 (2313) then you will struggle to find a spare finger to drop onto a string. Or if your middle finger is doing nothing, you can use that on the 3 rd fret, rather than sliding the index finger up. And you can slide it up from there to the 3 rd fret (3003) and back down again. As you are strumming C (0003), drop your index finger down onto the G string, 2 nd fret (2003) so you are playing a mixture of C and Am. The previous lesson had some variations on C, but for a 12 bar blues there is another which works well, similar to the way we changed the A chord. That’s the same chord sequence as above, but with C,F,G instead of A,D,E. Now let’s try something similar in a different key – let’s look at a 12 bar blues in C. If you do that, they stop being variations, and become the norm again. The thing to remember is not to do all of the variations all of the time. So that gives you ways to play around with all of the chords in a 12 bar blues in A. And if you can’t reach, no matter – E7 isn’t there for very long anyway! You just need to touch it down for a fraction and then off again. Then you can repeat the slide up to 3 rd fret (2023) and back down to 2 nd.Ĭhanging E7 is a bit of a stretch, but while you are playing 1202, there is just your little finger left – try to reach the 4 th fret on the A string. Speaking of D7, what can we do to give that some colour? Once again, when you are playing 2020, your spare finger can come into play, this time on the A string, 2 nd fret (2022). ![]() Once you have got that, you are more than half way there, because this same idea crops up again…įor a third variation, you can just switch from A (2100) to A7 (0100) – that can sound good immediately before you change to the D7. Practice doing that for a while, fitting it into the strumming. You might already know the chord which appears for a fraction of a second as F#m (2120) but just like the previous lesson, we are not going to worry about the theory – just hear the way it sounds.Īnd why stop there? Try dropping the finger on to the E string, 2 nd fret again, but instead of lifting it straight off, slide it up to the 3 rd fret and then back down to 2 nd. As you strum A again and again, drop your ring finger down onto the E string at the 2 nd fret, and then lift it straight off. ![]() ![]() If you are playing A (2100) with your index and middle fingers, your ring finger is probably already hovering over the open E string, so let’s put it to use. All of the ideas below are included in the video if you want to see & hear them in action. Now let’s look at each of those chords and see what we can do to them. …and in the video I play it through plain and simple, using the chords A = 2100, D7 = 2020, and E7 = 1202.
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