In this lesson we’re going to learn the D7 chord so that we have the three chords we need to play a complete a basic blues chord progression. From what you learned last lesson, lets see if you can figure out what note you need to change in a regular D chord to make it a D7. (Don’t look at the next paragraph yet). Take a minute to think about it, because if you figure it out for yourself, you’ll remember it forever! Ok, did you get it? The octave of D on the B string needs to be lowered 2 frets to become C. C is the flattened 7th of D. That sounds all well & good, but this C needs to be played on the first fret of the B string, so you’re going to need to adjust the fingering on this chord a lot. It’s a bit of a tricky one! Below is a diagram of the fretting hand fingering for D7 and a photograph of the correct hand positioning. 
What we need to do next is get used to changing between A7 D7 and E7, in a blues chord progression. A chord progression is any series of different chords used to make the harmony behind the melody, singer, lead instrument, etc. Set your metronome to 80 and strum on the first beat of every bar as follows: A7 (2 3 4) A7 (2 3 4) A7 (2 3 4) A7 (2 3 4) D7 (2 3 4) D7 (2 3 4) A7 (2 3 4) A7 (2 3 4) E7 (2 3 4) D7 (2 3 4) A7 (2 3 4) E7 (2 3 4) OK, now that you have managed moving back and forth to produce a blues chord progression, practice it at faster tempos, again increasing in increments of 5 bpm every time you complete the progression. Try to go up to 100 bpm. Congratulations! You now know how to play a twelve-bar blues chord progression in A. But….we need to add feel & rhythm to this progression to bring it to life. Now, if you’ve picked up the guitar and chosen to learn it, you must have listened to some blues before, as it is a genre heavily associated with the guitar. So let’s take a simple rhythm pattern and apply it to all the chords in our blues chord progression. A A A 1------------2------------3-----------4------------ In notation the rhythm looks like this:
You can listen to the example here.
Notice that the third strum is just before the 4th beat of the bar. This drives the rhythm along a bit and keeps it groovy. I hope you’ve enjoyed this lesson. In the next article, we’re going to learn a little picking lick that’ll make your blues sound a bit more authentic. Keep practicing, and see you next time! |
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