How to Play The 12 Bar Blues in G7 Guitar Riff

Hey guys,

Here´s another cool guitar lesson from Jon!

It´s a killer 12 bar blues riff in G7…

Hope you like it!

Hey, how’s it going everybody?
My name is John McClennan and I’m here
with guitarcontrol.com, bringing you this
guitar lesson. What I want to talk about
today is just breaking-up your blues
playing a little bit and maybe show you
a new approach you haven’t tried yet.

Here we have a G blues, starting off on
a G7 chord and we’re going to have a
pick-up on beat four. It’s a triplet.
It starts on the 3rd fret and goes up
chromatically to the 5th fret. Like this:
three, four, five. Then you drop down to
the 3rd fret and I do a little barre here:
5, 5, 5 on the — with my third finger.
Then I do this hammer-on, which is a
typical blues idiom. Playing a G7,
so we have that…

And then I’m going to start on the 4th
string, do that chromatic thing again
and then I’m going to hammer into a
G chord and that’s it. And then you’re
going to start over: four-and-a, one.

Then what you’ve got to do is you’ve
got to learn that basic riff and then
you’ve got to apply it through our
three basic chords in a traditional
blues, which will be the one, the
four and the five chord. In the
key of G that would look like a G7
and then a C7 and then a D7. So I
visually attach that riff to each
one of these shapes. G7 and then
when I move up to C7, the four
chord, I’m going to do the same
riff, just transposed, now starting
on the 8th fret instead of the 3rd.

Back down to G. And then I’m going
to go to the five chord, which is
going to begin on the 10th fret.
Four chord, 5th fret, back home.

So that’s a little sort of Texas
blues style riff for you. Be sure
to click the link below for the
tabs and we’ll see you in the next
lessons. Thank you for watching.

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