First Chords

by Griff

One of the key elements of blues is something called “call and response.” This comes from the origins of the blues back in slavery days where one person would call out, and the rest of the group on the work line would respond. From what I’ve read, this was actually used as a way for the slaves, who were typically shackled together, to keep in a rhythm and not make mistakes or fall… a potentially fatal error!

A lot of times in blues music, the call is in the form of a chord. A chord is simply anytime you play more than one note at a time. There’s a lot of theoretical mumbo jumbo we can get into about chords at a later time, but for now that’s what they are.

So grab your guitar, and follow along with this video where we’ll learn the 3 main chords for a blues in the key of E. Don’t worry if you don’t know what that is, we’ll get there.

Downloadables:

  • IPOD version of the video
  • WMV version of the video
  • Audio of the play along
  • PDF of the TAB for the tune

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