In this Guitar Control lesson, video instructor John McLennan will show you how to play “Blues Turnaround”. I cannot stress enough how imperative Blues Turnaround is. As a guitar player having many blues turnarounds in our vocabulary and fingers is like looking at a turn around in e.
A turnaround lick is a distinct phrase that goes from the end of the blues and ties you back into the top. Indeed a very classic sound.
Check the image above to follow the chords and tabs.
I will show you first, the lick then try practicing it together. Playing a blues in the key of e will have three chords. These are E7, a7, and ab set. The basic stages of the blues are just three chords the one, the four, and the five e, a, and b seven. All the chords are in the seventh chords and blues.
The lick on an e7 chord may perhaps be the e chord, by just removing your third finger and getting a seventh chord immediately, sounding more bluesy slide all the way up with the first finger on the fourth fret. Playing with those two notes together is just like the based off that basic e7 shape.
I will show you how to play for the lick. Start by playing the low e string and then play a lot of hybrid picking. That is where I use my pick and fingers, with the right hand sorting of pinch both of these strings with my pick on the fifth string and my middle finger on the third string. Those notes just kind of bloom, at the same time rather than strumming them to have low e and then play the high e string first string then come back and pinch those two notes again. It will all sound like this, and then I will drop it down a half step. To do this, move the same sequence where my fingers will not come off the strings. After dropping it down to third, fourth, second, third fret, and on the last one, think of this shape as your basic e7. Take your first finger off and do a quick hammer onto the first fret. It is a common sound in the blues, where you have the flat third being hammered into the major third of the chord.
There are a few different ways you can play and come back to one note. Here it is the one note variation, and of course, you set that up with a big b7 chord on the second fret, first fret, and second fret.
Let’s see if we could try the whole thing together one, two, three, four, blues. Be sure to subscribe on our YouTube Channel and we’ll see you at our next lesson, thanks for watching.
