Essential Electric Blues Fingerstyle Tips!

We're checking out four general ideas on how to accompany yourself when you're playing electric blues. These ideas will also translate nicely to acoustic too, so it's really open to everyone. There's plenty of context for each idea too, so please feel free to learn the parts in the video, or if you prefer you can just take the basic concept and apply it to your own playing and improvising. Please bear in mind that some basic level of blues playing is required for this lesson, in particular 12 bar blues structure, and E minor blues and pentatonic scales. If you're comfortable with those things then you should get plenty from this lesson! Let's start with the first idea:

The driving thumb

This is a great place to start with self accompanied playing. It makes a lot of sense as we are using the open strings to give a driving bassline, freeing up the entire left hand for playing melody notes. As you can see in the video, it's a good idea to pick a key that will allow you to use the open E and open A strings. In a blues this is going to be the key of E blues, but you could also use a capo to change keys and still keep to the open strings. Here's the open E minor pentatonic scale for your reference:

Timing

Before we add in any melody notes we need to get that thumb comfortably driving along on every beat and from there we can choose to play the other notes either with the thumb, or on the offbeat between. You could of course divide things up even further but it's very much worth getting comfortable with 4th and 8th notes before tackling anything else!

Once you have that thumb going you can then decide on how you're going to play the melody notes. There are a few main options. If you are playing a note on the beat, then you need to use either a finger or a hammer on/pull off/slide to play the note, but if it's on the offbeat you can use your thumb to play it too. Also bear in mind that you can hold notes for as long as you'd like too!

Chromatic runs to chord tones

This is a great technique that you could apply to self accompanied playing as well as within a full band context. It really relies on knowing when the next chord is coming up, what that chord is, and where the chord tones are! If you're used to sticking to one scale for each chord this is a great way to add a bit of variation to your playing. In the first example in the video we are on an E7 chord - the I in a 12 bar, playing around the E minor pentatonic scale, but when the change to an A7 comes up we break from that and chromatically run up to the major 3rd of the A7 - the IV. The trick to getting this to sound good is to start the run up so that you land on the chord tone in the note before the change. It sounds complicated, but with a bit of practice you'll get it. Listen to the examples in the video to get a feel for it too, and practice self accompanied so you don't have to worry about keeping to a tempo! Here is that run up to A7 to get you started:

Guitar drum kit

This style depends entirely on a really driving 'train on the tracks' style rhythm from the right hand. The use of different fingers to play the strings really creates a percussive sound and can evoke the sound of a drum kit (if you're imaginative!). The key to this is knowing which finger we're using on which beat to get this sound. It's best described with a diagram:

We're also trying to play with a swing feel to give it even more groove, and strumming over the high frets to get an even more percussive sound.

Once that's feeling comfortable you can start to include the left hand. Start with an E major chord and only let it ring out on the thumb note, and mute the rest. Then as you progress with this try to include some hammer ons or pull offs around the E minor pentatonic scale to add even more flavour.

Drone notes

This final idea links back to the first one, but instead of using the low open strings for a driving rhythm, we're now using them to give a low drone under whatever else we're playing. It works so well to fill out a sound and sounds beautiful with a slide too! It should be noted that a slide isn't necessary for this, you can play with your fingers too and a drone will still sound great.

A very important consideration for this style is that we want our drone strings to be able to ring unencumbered - this means we have to try to avoid them for any of our melody notes. You may find that this forces you to think about your scales differently, and we absolutely encourage that! If you can't use all the strings to play the notes you should try using just one, and play up and down the neck. To do this you won't be able to rely on boxes quite as much, but your knowledge of the intervals in common scales can really com in handy here. This also translates nicely to slide if you do want to try that out. Over the E drone you could (for example) try an E Major scale on the E string. Here it is written out for you: