Posts Tagged ‘Guitar’
If you have a hankerin’ to be a blues guitar player but don’t know how to start, there is no better way than to immerse yourself in the recordings of the blues guitar players of the twentieth century. You can use the licks of famous blues guitarists as building blocks that will eventually be the fragments of your own blues guitar solos. There is wide agreement amongst blues fans about who are the greatest blues guitarists, who is the best to learn from, but once you get talking to people you will realize that each person’s reaction to the works of the blues masters is personal and unique. So your starting point to being a blues guitar player is to take your own personal take on the blues you hear and expand on it.
If you are a new guitar player you might not be familiar with the various techniques that blues guitar players use to make their guitars sing. There is no special blues “magic” that you learn from the blues legends, the guitar techniques for one style are pretty much the same as for another, but you will find your own personal way of making established guitar techniques your own.
There’s a whole world of communication in the techniques that guitar players use to play notes with the left hand instead of picking using the right hand. The techniques are called hammer-ons and pull-offs. A pull-off is the art of picking a note and taking your left hand finger away in a kind of pulling action so that the note below your original note sounds. For example, you could place you first finger on the first fret of the first string and the second finger on the second fret of the first string. With both fingers in place, you pick the first string sounding the F# note and pull your second finger away so that the F note at the first fret sounds.
The “opposite” to the pull-off is the hammer-on which, if you follow up on the pull-off you just executed, you “hammer” the second finger back to where it was at the second fret so that the F# note sounds again. Another technique for the guitar player’s left hand is String Bending. If you look at your finger placed at a fret, you move the finger by pushing up and down. This makes your guitar string give a warbling sound.
As you are an aspiring blues guitarist of the twenty-first century, you will probably prefer to listen to electric guitar players. B. B. King is the coolest of the black blues guitarists, closely followed by a white English boy named Eric Clapton. You could also give a listen to Chuck Berry who is practically a one-man guitar style.
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Hamilton Canada Blues Blog Cool Fool: Blues Rockin’ the Hammer! (thanks Brother)
December 08, 2006
Gettin’ The Blues In 1963
Gettin’ The Blues In 1963: Something’s Gotta’ Hold On Me! I’d been thinking about it for awhile the early days of blues rock and early electric bands in general in Hamilton starting with my own experience growing up in Hamilton in love with black rock ‘n roll & rockabilly & electric blues & then playing with Son Richard (Richard Newell aka King Biscuit Boy) & the Chessmen from 1963 to 1965…and then I went to the Canal Bank Shuffle blues festival in Thorold, Ontario back in October and ended up seeing Harrison Kennedy backed by an old friend, Keith Lindsay on various keyboards who put me in touch with Russ Carter, the guitar player for The Bishops with which Harry had been front man at one time…and Russ has pictures & stories…& I was in band back then to & one thing leads to another so here I go… If anyone reads this & has access to or know where there are photos, documents & especially music, tapes, 8mm or super* film or better etc. (at the moment I’m looking for material from the late ’50s to the mid-60′s, pre-psychedelia but that will be another chapter & then the next era & so forth…) I’d love to get in touch and talk about adding the material to a “history of Hamilton bands” aspect of this blog…some bands contemporary with The Bishops and the Chessmen I remember: Freddy & the Goldtones, Doug Holland, The Prophets, The Bucks (I have vinyl by the Bucks! they practiced in a basement on East 26th Street a couple of blocks over from my house ), Frank Rondell, Nicky Moore & The Sceptres…but there were lots more… To give you an idea where I’m comin’ from here are some early band photos I somehow still have…and a couple of the tunes from a tape Richard made in 1963 at the Sportsmen’s Bowling Alley & lounge on the side of the escarpment in central Hamilton off Wentworth Street south…Richard, vocals & harp, Ron Copple, steel guitar, Rick Golka, lead guitar, Russell Carter guitar (understudying Rick on lead to take over at the next gig as Rick was leaving to play full time on the Ontario bar circuit with Frank Rondell with whom he eventually cut a few 45′s), Richie Hodgson, drums, Paul Cronkwright piano and myself on bass…playin’ the blues for me starts in 1963. We played all over the city, there were dances everywhere…we rehearsed in a Fish ‘n Chip Shop run by Ron Copple’s parents at Brucedale & East 13th right to next to a fav teen hangout, The Rocket, a combo variety store soda shop with a great juke box…let the joint jump, let the good times roll! 
