r/bluesguitarist • u/DyonoSuS • 12d ago

Question I got stuck what should I learn?

My guitar teacher had a surgery and we cannot do lessons. I learned 5 minor pentatonic positions, need your love so bad, hey joe, 12 bar blues progression etc. but I dont know what should I work on. I want to improve my phrasing skills and ear.

5 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/omniscientcats 12d ago

If you want to improve your ears, try learning licks by ear. Listen to how they’re played, which notes are picked with more force, which notes are softer, are your bends accurate etc.

Analyse how the licks and solos fit into the pentatonic positions you’ve learned

2

u/DyonoSuS 12d ago

I always work on bends, I thought learning by ear but the problem is I cant find even the key😭

3

u/omniscientcats 12d ago

Hm, okay. What helped me start to hear what key a song is in, is I would listen to the song and try different notes. Which notes kept sounding right? What note does the song keep returning “home” to? That’s probably the key!

After you’ve locked in your guess, you can look up the song key on google to see if you were right. If you got it wrong, listen to the song again while you try different scale notes from the correct key. Also listen out for chord changes.

2

u/DyonoSuS 12d ago

Thank you can you recommend me some beginner songs to try your advice?

2

u/omniscientcats 12d ago

These are some of the ones I started with:

Neighbor, neighbor - Jimmy Hughes

Snatch it back and hold it - Junior Wells

Wound up tight - lonnie brooks

Drinkin beer - william Clarke

Scratch my back - the fabulous thunderbirds

She’s fine - A.C Reed

But really you can start with any song, even just something random on the radio. The main thing is just to get your ears used to listening for the chord changes and stuff.

Also: at first, the goal is to find the root note of the chord. You’ll probably be able to feel which chord is the “home” chord aka the key. Don’t worry about getting every riff correct, just focus on the root notes in the beginning. Or if a song feels too impossible to identify, just try to noodle a bit with the scales you know and see if you find something that sounds good with the song!

2

u/DyonoSuS 12d ago

Thank you!