Teaching the Blues Part 3: Improvisation

Let me begin by saying that there are a myriad of guitar lessons and articles on the pentatonic scale and guitar improvisation on the web.  I'm sure many of them are more effective for teaching the adult student than my blog post. 

So if you're a new guitar teacher wanting to learn the blues for yourself first, check out some of these other resources as well.  The real purpose of this post is simply to present the methods I use to present this material to students of widely varying ability levels in the guitar classroom.

I begin by presenting the notes of the pentatonic scale (here in A minor) by playing something like the following for them:

Here is the Pentatonic scale presented as a guitar chord grid. (I got it from justinguitar.com.  His site is an awesome resource for players at any level.  Tons of blues lessons too.  Check it out!)  Place your first finger on the fifth fret for this position:

Then, I might play and sing some blues, inserting scale licks between the sung phrases, so that they get an idea of where we're going, but my purpose is not to intimidate or give them the impression that this will be incredibly difficult.

Next, I introduce scale notes on the first string only. I instruct them to place their first finger on the fifth fret, and we pulse that note until everyone is there. Then, fourth finger, 8th fret. Leave the first finger down for this one (at least to start).

After going over this for a couple of minutes, we do a call-and-response exercise using a simple quarter, quarter, half note rhythm. I say finger numbers, but fret numbers would work as well. I play and say, "One, one, one" etc. They repeat in rhythm. Then, "Four, four four".  We spend a couple of minutes here playing combinations of the two notes on the first string.

Now, it's time for a break. Using this three note structure, I ask them to tell me combinations of 1 - 1 - 4 that we could play, and we'll list them on the board. I say, "The first one's '1 - 1 - 1'." Here's where the analytical, creatively-challenged kids will breathe a sigh of relief, and some of their panic will subside.

By the end of this exercise you should have something like the following written on the board:

1 1 1         1 1 4         1 4 4         1 4 1
4 1 1         4 1 4         4 4 4         4 4 1

Then, we play this as a "song" with the quarter, quarter, half note rhythm I talked about earlier and including a measure of rest in between each phrase. I like to count it, "One, one, one - . Rest, rest, rest - ."

The measure of rest is key. Without it, inexperienced musicians have trouble playing anything which sounds like real phrasing. At this point, if you've taught them a 12-bar blues shuffle pattern, you can divide the class in half and have one section accompany the other. This can be pretty easily done even with very young students.

The real musician in you may cringe at the thought of breaking down blues phrasing in such a methodical way and essentially removing most of the creative aspects of improvisation, but you're not just teaching improvisation on Day One. You're teaching the scale and some basic elements of phrasing.  This is their beginning blues "vocabulary".

You're also quickly getting the class playing non-notated music as a two-part ensemble. When the kids hear both parts together, they'll be really pleased with the result. Of course the most important consideration is that you can’t improvise a single note solo as a large group. This exercise gets them all playing together.

Continued in part 4...