Why Blues?

Blog #4:  More musings on You-Tube:  Slash plays the Blues:     

Guns and Roses lead guitar man Slash.  Rock and Roll, right?

Those of you who are familiar with how I practice and teach the guitar will know that I think the BEST way to learn and get really fluid on the guitar is to really learn the language of the blues guitar.  I was surfing just a little on You-Tube and stumbled on this video.   When I watched this video of Guns and Roses axeman Slash ( playing with BB King no less: I’ve seen everything, now ) I was impressed at how it shows that  he really knows his blues!  Slash is known as a rocker, but it’s clear he cut his teeth on blues.  Not only that: he really knows the language awfully well.

Players often say to me:  Blues, that’s about a 12- Bar progression and pentatonic scales, right?    Well, not really.  No . Really Blues is a language all to itself.  If you learn this language you will know how to make the guitar speak.  Really.

Like BB says in the video, it’s “Mississippi stuff.”

For a great blues lead that’s easy to figure out, check out this video a student posted of me a few years back:

Joe Belmont, Northampton guitar lessons: joe@joebelmont.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.