If you’re Mr. happy-go-lucky, go sing a jo-bros song. The blues is not for you. Did a girl leave you for another man, or…another woman? Did you lose your dog? Did you drop your lucky penny down the sewer? Maybe the 7-11 down the street stopped carrying your favorite slushee flavor. You’ve got the blues, you’ve got a guitar–now you need to learn the scales. Those distinctive, southern, pre-Elvis post gospel scales.
You could just begin by tuning your guitar half a step down. Not a drastic change but it makes your guitar sound more growly without losing all the high range. It’s easy to pick up bad habits from them. It may be that this pro is a natural like you, but one that didn’t take lessons, or spend months and years perfecting his technique. So I recommend you get guitar instructional dvds. Oh, and maybe Suzanne Vega. Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and “Captain Jack” are songs that get a crowd going but maybe you need some vocal skills for those.
Every blues song consists of three chords. They’re the one the four and the five. “Blackbird” and “Hey Jude” would be a good beginning and finale. You might want to think about an instrumental piece to continue the mood once the singing has died away.
Before you get guitar instruction dvds, remember that you are going to give this thing your time and more importantly, your money. So make sure the guitar instructional dvds is a good one before you invest. Go online, see if you can find any write-ups on them, check the papers, ask around, talk to friends. But make sure the guitar lessons dvds is a good one and has a good reputation.
Make a commitment right now to consistently practice your guitar. Now, this is the point where practicing the guitar can be like a diet…it works for a little while, and yet you eventually fall back into the old habits that you are used to. Dieting is not what we want here. Don’t turn your guitar practice time into extended guitar solos.If you have a track of say, six minutes at your disposal, use it to practice licks and short solo breaks, the age of the twenty minute solo is long gone. You can be as basic or as flashy as you like because the songs stand up by themselves with just basic accompaniment or you can use any of the classical guitar style arrangements that you can find in music shops.
All the great guitarist have struggled at some point in learning to play the guitar. As far as guitar lessons for beginners there are different ways to go, such as a private instructor, signing up for classes at your local community center, self-teaching method with books and guitar instruction dvd which I recommend because they’re cheaper and flexible to a persons schedule. Whichever way you choose be sure to keep in mind there are no “play guitar like a pro in one hour” course.. These are songs that everybody in the world knows the words to, or at least they can fake it. Some artists that are always popular at singalongs are James Taylor, Leonard Cohen and Greenday.