INTRO
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Justin Sandercoe of justinguitar.com lends GT his insight as one of the world’s most successful guitar teachers. This month: Blues Statistics.
In the last instalment we got into some musical statistics and how you can play the odds in your favour when improvising with the Major scale. This month I’d like to hit on the blues.
I’ve been teaching the idea of improvising on a 12-bar blues for over 30 years now, and must have taught the Minor Pentatonic a thousand times. And there’s this funny event that happens in maybe 20-30% of students.
Usually, I teach the A Minor Pentatonic after a student has learned to play a 12-bar shuffle. I teach them the regular fingering using first, third and fourth fingers and send them off to memorise and practise it for a week before trying to improvise with it.