Teaching the Blues Part 2

Armadillos Taste Like Chicken


Last year I had an epiphany during a morning jog. I was trying to come up with an easier way to teach the 12-bar blues structure. For me the problem is that the pattern repeats within one measure. So, it’s sometimes difficult to teach students to count four bars when they’re actually saying the fret numbers 2-2-4-4 twice per measure. It dawned on me that if I had an eight-syllable phrase to go with the shuffle that it would be easier to remember. Then, I thought, “What if it was a phrase beginning with ‘A’ for the A spot and so forth.

What I finally came up with was:

“Armadillos taste like chicken”, “Don’t you know they’re finger lickin’”, “Everybody loves to eat ’em”. If you sing it over the following changes you get the highly singable last four measures, “Everybody loves to eat ‘em. Don’t you know they’re finger-lickin’. Armadillos taste like chicken. Armadillos.”

A A A A
D D A A
E D A A

It makes for a great ending. It’s funny because the kids think of it as a real song. I had immediate success with this. I even taught it to a 9-yr-old in a private lesson to memorize “Johnny B Goode”. She doesn’t even practice but came back the next week still able to play it. I’ve never had that kind quick retention with a young student and the 12-bar blues shuffle.

Here's the pdf of the tune as sung while learning the pattern.

Swing and the Palm Mute

I usually introduce the blues shuffle to beginners with a straight-eighth feel. Many rock and country songs use this straight feel and it’s easier to teach. However, to get a real blues sound it needs to swing. Swing is usually indicated in notation with something like this:

This is an oversimplification of what is really a “feel”, but is probably the best way to notate what is desired. Listen to some real blues music! The long-short, triple feel is a big part of it.

Another important technique for getting a good blues sound is the palm mute. Here is a pretty good video explaining it. Pay particular attention to the blues shuffle sound he gets at the beginning of the video. That’s the muted sound you often hear with the blues.

Chords and Other Variations of the Shuffle Pattern

One way to vary what you’re doing with the blues is to have some students play a chord accompaniment while others play the shuffle and improvise. There is great section on the blues in Jerry Snyder’s Guitar School. He introduces the basic seventh chords used to play over blues changes as well as some chord variations which can make the chords sound more like a real accompaniment. He even includes a chord shuffle pattern. Snyder’s mute-strum pattern which is taught in the preceding lessons provides a great resource for teaching a real blues rhythm feel. 

He’s got versions of the 12-bar blues in the keys of A and E with standard notation and tablature. These are common variations of the really basic one in my first blues post and include a V chord turnaround. There are numerous other books on playing the blues if you’re interested in learning the many variations of the12-bar blues' structure, solo licks, shuffle pattern variations, and blues turnarounds.

Jerry Snyder's Guitar School is reviewed in a previous post and comes highly recommended. It has a notation section in the back, and in the front section he fully integrates rhythm playing into learning an ample number of basic/intermediate chords. This one's a must-have for the guitar classroom.  

In my next post I'll discuss blues improvisation and how I teach it to very young beginners.