Open-String Blues
Tutor Richard Barrett | Gear used Knaggs SSC & Vox AC15 C1 Difficulty | 10 mins per example
WHEN IMPROVISING BLUES licks and solos, most of us would have to admit that, from time to time (or perhaps more often than that), we call upon on ‘stock’ phrases at will and vary these to fit over different chords, tempos and even styles if we go so far as to take things like tone/amp settings into consideration. The idea behind these four examples is to give a few ideas to incorporate into your internal ‘library’. I’ve chosen to use lots of open strings in the key of E as this sounds classic and allows you to create a complete‑sounding blues piece without having to rely on a backing track, even though one is included here.
Some aspects of these ideas will survive the transition into other keys, but that might be something to discuss another day. My initial plan was to go very traditional, in the John Lee Hooker or Howlin’Wolf/Hubert Sumlin school of thought, but plugging into the studio’s Vox AC15 set slightly louder than that was too much fun to
ignore – and reminded me of ‘Beano’-era Clapton covering Freddie King’s Hideaway, so things spiralled from there!
Purely from a playing point of view, this isn’t so different from the original plan. However, you can tell there is more sustain and thickness available for higher register playing and/or single-note lines, so it was interesting to realise this by way of following in the footsteps of Clapton (and many others). It’s a bit like re-enacting the moment when blues-rock guitar was born! You could stick all these ideas together to make one solo, but they were actually conceived as separate phrases – some fresh patterns for the fingers to try out and ideas to internalise and expand your vocabulary. I hope you enjoy them and see you next time.
Richard Barrett’s album, Colours, (complete with backing tracks), is available now from www.richardbarrettguitar.com