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This is about the most common blues progression you are likely to hear. A typical 3 chord progression in the Key of A. A common trick is to slide or play the next chord one whole tone up briefly. You will recognize it from many many blues tunes. A handy thing to put in your tool kit.

There are several ways to play this. I have shown just one. On an acoustic, you may want to put in an extra fast strum just before the slide up so the strings will ring more clearly. You could also just fret the chord change instead of sliding. That works too.
As you can see all the chords are minor 7s. Look at the CAGED lesson and you will see that the 4 notes in each chord are part of the base of the relevant barre chords. The numbers from lightest to thickest strings are 1,5,b3,b7. A nice straight line. Perfect for one finger.

Out of respect for the ouchies of trying to play the Em7 bit at the 12 fret on an acoustic, I moved the pattern down to the nut.

Once you get a feel for how this kind of pattern playing works you will find all kinds of ways to create your own.

The midi file is a bit choppy since the GP program is really persnickety about note entry. Play the tune, fast, slow what ever you like. Smooth out the timing to suit what you want and your good to go. It plays better than it notates but, my recording software is down at the moment. Bummer.


These kind of patterns come in very handy when you jam with other people. it seems everyone wants to play lead and no one knows how to hold down a rhythm part. Being able to put together patterns like this on the fly will make you a very popular player.
I hope you have some fun with this and find ways to make it your own.

I will do another lesson using this same idea to give you a muting exercise in Texas blues. You will immediately hear how players like SRV use the above to lock into a groove.

Attached Files

•  blues.mid   2.52K   125 downloads
•  one finger blues bt.jpg   63.99K   155 downloads