Blues Jam Tracks

There are several scales you should learn to become a proficient blues guitarist. Now a big part of my reason why I think Blues backing tracks are so darn important in your learning is so that you can:

a.) Have fun while your learning (it’s like playing with a full band right)
b.) Learn those different scales faster then you would just playing them up and down over and over.

What Scales Do You Need to Know?

Everyone talks about the Pentatonic scale. It’s an important part of learning the guitar and learning to play lead in both the blues and rock genres. The blues scale is just an extension of the pentatonic scale with a couple of notes added.

Now beyond your basic blues scale you should know your major scales, not that you play major scales over a 12 bar blues progression but because it helps you find color notes around the neck you can add into your playing.

Now beyond learning just the scale it’s important that you understand where the root notes are for each position of a given scale.

The root note is often where you want to resolve a run or lick that you play. If you don’t end off on the root note then you can find sometimes that it doesn’t quite sound right.

Where to Learn the Scales?

There are several places online you can learn your scales.

The easiest, and the resource that I personally use are online guitar lessons such as those offered from websites like Jamplay.com and Guitar Tricks. I find that the professional instruction offered from websites like this far out weighs the slight cost of $15-$20 bucks a month you pay to be a member.

Free online guitar lessons also teach you some of this basic material. You can look to sites like YouTube for teachers who film lessons. the draw back here is you often don’t get a print off sheet that will teach you the guitar neck and where all the root notes are etc.

Finally there are DVD instruction courses that you could use. I have seen blues specific courses such as Learn & Maser the Blues or Blues Guitar Blue Print. Both of these courses offer quality instruction on not just the blues and other scales but everything that is blues guitar.

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Learning to play blues guitar online is an awesome method to keep up with your guitar instruction, even if you have a crazy busy schedule. I say this from experience since I’m a busy professional but still finds time to improve my guitar playing since to professional online guitar lesson videos.

In terms of learning the blues there are two primary places you can learn. I mean there are of course more then just a couple of places you could potentially learn to play the blues, but for me the two that I’d opt for are either Jamplay.com or GuitarTricks.com.

NOTE: Jamplay has released some recent Jamplay coupon codes where you can save 25% off your first month or 10% off your entire order if joining for more then one month. Guitar Tricks has released a new 14 day Free Trial option where you can sign-up, pay nothing for the first 14 days and test drive their content before you have to pay a cent.

I cannot say which site offers the better blues guitar lessons. I’ve used both and like both. The difference in teachers makes for some difference in the way things are taught, and I find that the videos at Guitar Tricks are a bit more too the point rather then drawing things out with a lot of talking. When you’re learning the blues or any other style on the guitar the first thing that’s important is the actual learning and initial explanation. The next part that is important is the time you spend practicing and really learning the parts that you need to master and get under your fingers so you can move on to something new.

So in the end how well you end up doing with online guitar lessons is a reflection on how hard you’re willing to work and how much time and effort you put into things to make them happen for yourself.

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