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Is it really possible to learn blues guitar? Some say not and others say it is the hardest style of playing to learn, while others claim it to be easy. It can't be all three, so what is the truth? Can you learn blues guitar or can't you?

The answer to that question lies in what is meant by blues. Lots of people have heard of blues but have no idea what it means. Many people play a style of blues that is not true blue, if you like. It's sort of a pale imitation that sounds a bit like the real thing, but the player has obviously no idea of music or of what the terms twelve bar or 7th mean. They are playing what they think sounds like blues, as a large number of guitarists do. In that respect then, blues is easy to learn. First let's have a look at what the term 'blues' means.

It all began with the field songs, spirituals and other forms of music developed by the African-Americans, and has developed through the ages to what is now a fairly structured form of music. The 'blue' notes are slightly lower pitched than the major scale notes, sometimes by even less than a semi tone. These notes eventually became the basis of rhythm and blues, bluegrass and, of course, traditional jazz.

There was little standardization in blues until the early 1930s when 12 bar blues became the norm. You still get 8 and 16 bar blues being played, but 12 is now regarded as the standard. As far as guitar is concerned, there is a preference in blues for open strings, or strings unfingered when playing, and the way the strings are tuned reflect this.

In terms of music theory, blues is a basic I-IV-V chord progression laid over a 12-bar framework. In terms of sound, blues is really up to the listener. However, in terms of teaching the blues, we go back to the 12-bar framework and the under pitched notes. So how do you learn blues guitar?

Some say it is best to have a working playing ability before progressing to blues, while others believe that if you are tainted by learning standard guitar, then you will never be a true blues player. Likely the answer is somewhere between. Most people don't know what real blues is. If you listened to B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf and Louis Armstrong, they were all blues, but they sound different. So was an early Elvis Presley. As it is with any music genre, so it is with blues: you cannot standardize music or it would all sound the same.

So how do you learn blues guitar? You won't learn it from a book, that's for sure. OK, you might be shown the finger positions for the blues chords and how to tune your guitar. Remember how I stated that blues guitar is based on a lot of open chords? Well, one way blues guitarists achieve that is tune to an open G, which means that once the guitar is tuned and you strum the strings without any fingering, the result is a G chord. That's one example of blues tuning and there are others. Also popular is open D tuning, so there is no definitive standard.

Another example of blues playing is that you won't find a 3rd in blues, but lots of 7ths. Take A - played normally with three closed and two open strings. A7 has the middle of the three closed strings open, so there are only the two closed strings.

However, no matter how good your tuning instructions and chord diagrams are, you can't teach blues in a book. It has to be live--either that or by video. Video teaching can be just as good as live teaching; but whichever it is, it must be one of them. That is because the reason for blues tuning and the way blues are played has to be explained. Something is much easier to understand if you understand the reason.

Online video guitar lessons are probably the best way of all, because you can replay the lessons as many times as you need to. You will be shown how to play the relevant chords and notes, and you can also hear what they sound like. That is very important: to be able to hear what your teacher is playing, so that you can compare that with your own sound. This is especially true with blues where the sound is very important.

With video you can also see the techniques used rather than try to visualize them from a written or audio description. Even if there is a diagram, there is nothing as good as video to demonstrate how a note should be played or a string pulled for the right effect.

In reality it makes no difference whether you have played guitar before or not. You will learn blues the same way, although many blues artists claim that you are born to the blues and cannot play blues music unless you have been. Sure, it might take a good musical ear to determine the difference between real blues and that form of it played by most semi-professionals at weekend gigs, but there is no reason why you cannot learn it.

A good online video teaching website and a willingness to learn a form of music that is different from mainstream guitar music, and you should be all set. It is just another style of playing guitar after all. Once you know how to learn blues guitar there is no reason why you should not be up to the task. And the 'how' is by means of a good online guitar teaching website that you can return to continually until you have perfected each lesson.

By then you will be an expert blues guitar player.

Keywords: learn blues guitar, blues guitar player, online video guitar lessons

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Andre Sanchez,