12 Bar Blues Rhythm Exploration I

Muting the 2nd and 4th beat is a very common strumming pattern.

You can rest there or apply some string noise.

Here's an example of a palm muting pattern you can use to apply a distinctive rhythm to simple power chords.

Play close attention to the notation to make sure you accent the right notes!

You can even take a more riff based approach to the rhythm.

Focus on mostly targeting chord tones to keep your rhythm feeling locked in to the groove.

This is one of the first forms of the 12 Bar Blues most guitarists learn.

It's a very distinctive sound, try it out and you'll probably recall hearing it previously!

Here we take a chromatic step between the V and IV chords!

You can almost always get away with this trick, even if you're using full chords.

We can also do a chromatic run at the end of a bar, back to the same chord we were just playing!

You can also use a chromatic walk-up like this to lead in to the next chord in the pattern.

Perhaps the most common form of the 12 Bar Blues is the Major Blues.

Simply change all your chords to Major, though you can use a Dom7 shape on the V chord.

You can use the Major or Minor Pentatonic here!

There is also a Minor Blues, swapping all the chords to Minor. You can still use a Dom7 on the V, though!

You'll definitely want to use the Minor Blues Pentatonic for this one, the Major won't work as well here.

The real heart of the blues lies in the Dominant 7th. You can actually replace every chord with a Dom7!

This makes little sense Diatonically, but the blues isn't too concerned with Diatonics.