Guitar
Five short lessons from first hold to your first shuffle and your first taste of slide.
Ears First
IntroKnow what a 12-bar blues actually is — in your body, not on paper — before you touch an instrument.
12 bars, four beats in each. Count the bars out loud, 1 to 12, clapping or tapping your foot along — that's the whole form, and most blues songs ever written live inside it. Three chords do the work: the home chord, the one that lifts you up, and the one that wants to come back home. That's it — that's I, IV and V, and you never need the Roman numerals again. One more thing before you play a single note: let the last note of a line ring out. Don't rush into the next one. The silence is part of the music.
Can you count all 12 bars out loud, in time, without losing your place?
Backing in E. Count 1–12 out loud. Don't play yet.
Cliff Smith Backing Tracks
That's the shape you'll build on — Stevie Ray Vaughan's profile is where this course eventually points.
Open the artist profile