The Friendly 12bar Blues Guitar Forum

First post, saying hi.

I'm the kind of guy who has owned a guitar for a while. I play it a little bit each month but I can't seem to "get it." The first time I bought a guitar I looked at a thousand tabs and learned the intro to a hundred songs and played them poorly. Then I learned several chords. I would strum, pause, strum, switch chord, pause, strum, repeat. Then I learned the C (major?) scale. That does come in handy. After a while that all went to hell, I realized I had been trying to play for years and I knew a bunch of crappy intros and a few random chords, along with budda ta beeda ta budda ta beeda.

The closest I came to progress is when I'd listen to BB King and just play. He'd play a few licks, and I'd play what sounded close. Then when I would be hanging out id just mess around like that. From there I did come up with some pretty cool blues licks, but still couldn't construct a song. I remember I had a friend that was in a band and he once randomly said, "you have to learn to play to the tap of your foot or something."

After I found this website and did the malted milk lesson that fiiiiiiinally hit me! I still am a far cry from a decent guitar player but everything I've read about in the past is making sense now. I think the best thing is now I have confidence in my practice. Before I would think, "well maybe I need to learn this or that." Now I see the progress being made. Thank you 12bar.de!

James

I'm sure you'll fit in real well here.......like most things ....the more you stick in........the more you'll get out

But this is a fab family, Some great folk ...............and some really helpful people too .

Enjoy !!

James, Welcome ! you found the best place on the web :)

Hi there James... welcome to the forum. This is a great place for Blues guitar. Glad to have you as a new member of the group.

Hi James and welcome to the site.

I think there are quite a few of us here who have returned to guitar playing and are improving our skills. I've been working on Malted Milk for a while myself.

I think you will enjoy the gang here.

Hey and welcome to 12bar.

If you're looking to get your confidence up and improve your chops by ALOT, i suggest going through the beginning lessons on this site and try the "From The Crade" album lessons. That and all the other album lessons are a gold mine for learning blues guitar. It taught me how to play like EC and introduced me to sooooo many of my now favorite blues men.

Sorry for being late, but:
A great community here!

james. You should find lots to help your playing here. I've had huge loads of great advice in just a few months since I found this site - it's made a big difference to my playing and to my confidence (just possibly these two are linked! ).

Sorry for the late welcome but I'm just back from the wilds of Scotland with no internet - or mobile phone reception - or a guitar.

Wow, thanks for the warm welcome.

LeftyBlues wrote:Hey and welcome to 12bar.

If you're looking to get your confidence up and improve your chops by ALOT, i suggest going through the beginning lessons on this site and try the "From The Crade" album lessons. That and all the other album lessons are a gold mine for learning blues guitar. It taught me how to play like EC and introduced me to sooooo many of my now favorite blues men.

Will do. I'm on "the basics of guitar music" section right now. It's a bit brutal but it's not too bad. I do know some theory so this theory stuff isn't alien to me. I just finished the part on intervals and am moving on. I figure I only have to read the boring stuff once then it's smooth sailing.

Right now I'll do like a half and half when I practice; that is, jam out to a random 12 bar bb song, then read theory. That way I have fun, and I learn (what I call) technical stuff. What's really cool is through learning this basic song structure my ear has developed. I can hear the chord changes and I don't have to keep track of where I'm at in the song in my mind as I play.

Do you guys have any 12 bar songs I can play along with? I only know of a couple of songs off the top of my head, therefore my practice time with it can be quite short.

The "basics" can be used to look for details while going through the other parts. It's a lot of theory, but you don't need it all.

At the end of http://12bar.de/rhythm.php is a short overview of some 12bar songs played by EC. But in the archive ( viewtopic.php?f=1&t=39 ) there are a lot of free backing tracks you can use. That's what many of us do - take a good BT and play to it.

On youtube there are some nice bt's, too.

If you have special questions, feel free to ask!

12bar wrote:The "basics" can be used to look for details while going through the other parts. It's a lot of theory, but you don't need it all.

At the end of http://12bar.de/rhythm.php is a short overview of some 12bar songs played by EC. But in the archive ( viewtopic.php?f=1&t=39 ) there are a lot of free backing tracks you can use. That's what many of us do - take a good BT and play to it.

On youtube there are some nice bt's, too.

If you have special questions, feel free to ask!

That is exactly what i needed, thanks a million!