- Blues Chords For Beginners
- E Chord Progression - Basic Blues Chords in E
- Moveable Blues Chords - Chord Inversions for the Blues in E
- Scrapper Blackwell Blues In E
- A Blues Chords - Progression in the Key of A
- Alternative Chords - Basic Blues Chords in A
- Piedmont Blues Chord Progression
- Most popular blues chords - Blues Chord Progression In G
- Open Tuning Chord Structure
- Key To The Highway Blues Chords For Guitar
- Love in Vain Blues Guitar Lesson - Robert Johnson
- Blues Lessons From Texas To The Delta
Blues Chords for Beginners - Easy Blues Chord Progression in E


Chords For Blues Guitar - What Are Blues Guitar chords?
Blues Guitar Chord Progressions
Simple BLUES CHORDS progressions IN THE KEY OF E


An Easy Blues Progression In the Key of E
The first thing you'll notice is that it's not a complex chord shape - just cluster of 3 strings across 2 frets held down by the index finger, second and third fingers.
Standard Blues Chord Sequence For Blues In E chords - Turning The E into E7

Chords progressions blues - The Basic A Chord Shape


B7 Completes The Famous Blues In E Progression

Easy Blues Progression Chords - Movable Blues Chords - Inversions for the Key Of E


Easy Blues Chord Progression - Other ways to play the B7 Chord

How To Play A Blues In E Scrapper Blackwell Style
Kokomo Blues - Blues In E by Scrapper Blackwell.mp3

Key To The Highway Chords and Tab
Blues Chords in A - Classic Delta Blues In A Chords


how-long.mp3

Other Common Chord Progressions - Chord Inversions For The Blues Progression in A

Typical Piedmont Blues Guitar Chord Progression

Blues Progressions In The Key Of C

Ragtime Blues Progressions - Turnaround In Key Of G.mp3
Chord Structure In Open Guitar Tuning
Open G Guitar Tuning

Guitar Tuning - Open G - DGDGBD.mp3
Love in Vain Blues Guitar Lesson - Robert Johnson
Video Transcript:
Hello again - today we're going to look at a version of love in vain by Robert Johnson. It's based loosely on the original and I've tried to keep many of the licks that Johnson used, although it might lack a little of his intensity which was which was very special. But it does allow us to put ourselves into the music within the basic structure.
It's a piece in A and let's take a look at the chords we are going to use. First of all I use a long A in this form, then often I use my little finger to hold the last two strings down. This is a Lightnin Hopkins trick which gives a really nice effect.
Then of course for you A7 in this form. We have a basic E chord and it wouldn't be a blues without an E7 chord. We also use a D7 chord - this is the full D7 chord but often we just use this half-chord.
We have a diminished chord. Now we use a kind of a D7 shape high up here on the ninth, the eighth and the seventh fret. Really that's about it. The interesting thing that we're doing, a long A chord is of course the trademark Johnson rundown.
You'll notice throughout this song that the thumb is striking the bass strings quite heavily and very often damping as soon as it strikes in this way. It's a strange kind of technique because if you do it too hard the strings buzz and they don't make a very nice noise so it's a little bit critical, but it provides this boom boom boom.
The nice driving bass beat it gives it a lot of intensity and of course the treble notes with the fingers provide an answer to that bass. It's right out of the Delta, isn't it? Sometimes we want to damp but this will become apparent when we're playing through the song. Sometimes you'll feel that it needs to be damped and sometimes you can let it ring a little bit.
The recipe is pretty straightforward, except that on the D7 chord we have a hammer on and a pull off, and a hammer-on and then a pull off again in this way. You'll see this in the tablature later. If you could only manage one hammer on and one pull off for now then do them. And now I'll play the introduction and one verse and the instrumental break to show you what we're aiming for. Here we go with Love in Vain by Robert Johnson ...
Went down to the station with my suitcase at my hand
Down to the station with my suitcase in my hand
I feel so lonesome
All my love was in vain.
Let's take a look at the tablature now and the detailed tuition for Love in Vain. We'll start with introduction, which is quite short and then we'll look at the detailed tablature which is quite slow. I'll show you first of all how this section should sound.
It sounds quite strange when you finish halfway through there but when you learn this section and the next section and put them together, you sort of make sense. At the moment the strings are ringing because we're leaving them, but normally when we play we run them all together.
See how you get on all of the tableture. If you brush across both of them it's quite nice. As we move on to the D7 we open the bass and then put our thumb back on, in that way, which is a nice percussive effect. We drop on to the E7 using this double hammer-on and pull-off effect. Also with the E7, we just bend that note a little bit before we let it go.
And now we come to the section where we're going to play D7 again and here I use an effect that is a trademark of Johnson's. He's holding the 6th string down on the second fret with this thumb. We're hitting them with the thumb of our right hand, then we'll drop it down to the 1st fret and back to the second. But in between those strokes we're going to hit this 5th string with our finger.
Here's what it sounds like with the music. See how you get on. Well that's the end of the tuition for Love in Vain I hope you have enjoyed it. If you've got any questions or comments at all please email me on [email protected] and I'll be happy to talk to you.
Make some time in the morning and the evening to practice regularly, even if it's a little but regularly is much more beneficial than two or three hours one day and then nothing for two or three days. Another thing I want to say is that often guitar instructors talk about the riffs and the chords and the scales and the technique but one important ingredient when you play the blues is his attitude.
Try and put yourself in the shoes of these these old guitar masters. How they lived, how they worked. They traveled around playing for a room, playing for food. Life was very hard. Let the intensity in that feeling come out in your music and you won't go wrong. I'll see you again, bye-bye.
FAQ About Blues Chords
It depends on the key. For the key of E, you typically have the E chord, A or A7, and B7. If you play a blues in the key of A, then you have the A chord, the D7 chord and E7 chord.