Welcome to Blues Guitar World. If you are like me, you have probably watched many "Kings of the Blues" and imagined being able to play as well as they can. BB King once said "I don't think anybody steals anything; all of us borrow". That's exactly what I have tried to achieve with this site. I am not a guitar teacher, or an expert guitarist in any way, shape or form - I'm just keen to learn. These days we are so lucky to have the Internet, and more importantly, people who are prepared to share knowledge and experience. Blues Guitar World is intended to borrow that knowledge and experience, and keep it one place.

I started this site to simply "Bookmark" everything useful I found on the internet. It has grown into a bit more than that since but the initial concept is still the main focus. Take a look through the site, I think you'll love some of the videos and lessons I have found. I've also placed a selection of great "Teach yourself Blues" books which can be found on the webstore.

So pick up that guitar and try out some of the lessons you find on this site. Please feel free to comment on any articles you view, it will help me improve this site.

Enjoy!

James

This article shows beginner guitar players the 12 bar blues progression and how to play it with simple open position blues chords. Blues guitar is great fun to play. This article shows you the simple chords and basic blues song structure you can use to play many thousands of songs.

Learning to play the blues is not only great fun, it also gives you valuable skills you can use in other styles such as rock, soul, R&B, funk and jazz. Blues guitar uses distinctive sounding chords called dominant 7th chords. These are denoted by the number 7 following the chord name.

The dominant 7th chord is simply a normal major or minor chord with a 7th note two frets below the root note added. For example, you add a D note to an E major chord to form an E7, a G note to an A chord gives you A7, and so on.

You can add the 7th note to many chords by finding a root note and changing the fingering to play the note two frets below it. The chord diagrams below show you easy open blues chords in the key of A major.

E7            A7                D7

e 0|---|---|  0|---|---|---|    |---|-3-|
B 0|---|---|   |---|-2-|---|    |-1-|---|
G  |-1-|---|  0|---|---|---|    |---|-2-|
D 0|---|---|   |---|-1-|---|   0|---|---|
A  |---|-2-|  0|---|---|---|   x|---|---|
E 0|---|---|  x|---|---|---|   x|---|---|