Hey there, In Part 1 of the Blues Guitar Lessons with Max Clilverd you learnt the 12 Bar Blues form using chords A7, D9 and E9. Hopefully you learnt a little bit about this form of playing and have been inspired to play Blues guitar. Today you are going to learn how to adapt the 12 bar Blues for a slightly more Jazzy sound. Many a great Blues player has played the Blues in a standard predictable way and this is part of the Blues appeal, people know the sound and they love it. However, over time you may wish to add elements of Jazz to add interest and take the listener to somewhere new. Players such as Robben Ford are famous for this approach and it is well worth taking something from this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBhCsMybh_I&list=UU-ZXOQwr3ysckGcOsn8T-pQ&index=3&feature=plcp
A7 goes A13
Our first adaptation to the original Blues is to make our A7 chord an A13, if you look at bar 1 (below) you can see how to play the A13. Our next adaptation is to make our A13 an A7b13 you can see this in bar 4 shown below. This creates a walking down feel between the chords and functions as a nice transition between the A13 and D9. You may have noticed that Max plays the 7th fret high E string when playing the A13, this is the 9th scale tone and is perfectly fine to add to the chord. In the second half of bar 6 you can see the Ab13 chord which is the A13 chord played one fret lower, this is functioning as a passing chord to link the D9 and A13.
Blues Lesson 2
Get comfortable playing along with Max, trying to mimic his feel and then loop the 12 bar. This is such a great progression to get down and will make jamming with other musicians a lot easier.
I hope you have learnt something new and be sure to check out our eBooks for a thorough guide to guitar.
Tom Clark