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Introduction
3
Right hand and left hand: If you play the guitar as a right-handed
person, the right hand strums and picks and the left hand frets. If you’re
left-handed, you can either play as a right-handed person, or you can
reverse the process. If you choose the second method, remember to
convert the terms and that I refer to the right hand and right-hand fingers
as the strumming and picking hand and the left hand as the fretting
hand. Nothing against lefties, mind you, but it’s easier and shorter to say
“right hand” instead of “strumming or picking hand.”
High and low, up and down: When I say “higher on the neck” or “up the
neck,” I refer to the higher-numbered frets, or the region closer to the
body of the guitar than the headstock. “Going up” always refers to going
up in pitch, which means toward the higher frets or skinnier strings —
which happen to be closer to the floor than the ceiling.
One staff at a time, please: Many of the exercises contain both music
notation and tablature. The tab tells you what frets and strings to play;
the music tells you the pitches and the rhythms. These ways present the
same information in different ways, so you need to look at only one at a
time. Pick the one that works best for you.
What You’re Not to Read
Occasionally, you will come across some boxes of text that are shaded gray
(also called sidebars). You have my permission to skip over this info. Don’t
get me wrong; the info is fun and interesting, but it’s not the most crucial
points of blues guitar.
Foolish Assumptions
In this book I make the following assumptions about you:
You’re an average reader who knows a little something about the guitar
or the blues.
You want to sound like a blues player and take the path that allows you
to discover many things about the guitar and music.
You want to play quickly without a lot of messing around with music
theory and all that stuff. You want exactly what you need to know at that
moment in time without all the lectures and teacherly instincts.
TEAM LinG