Blues Improvisation Open E Chord - 4

Adding An A Note

This is the last note to be added to the melody side of things and is fairly straightforward in terms of adding it to an improvised melody.

What may be less straightforward is the technique I use to get this note - the "flip" method I use is extremely useful in blues playing so it is worth persevering trying to get it into your bag of tricks.

As I say in the video if you can't get your third finger to flip then use your little finger instead.

Some blues styles use this hanging out on just one chord to great hypnotic effect - John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf spring to mind for this.

It is also a good excercise to see how much variety you can get into a very restricted framework - the use of dynamics, as explained in the video, can add a lot of variation to the sound.

All of the techniques discussed in this tutorial can be used on the "E" part of a standard 12 bar blues in the key of E - so your'e not necessarily restricted to just staying on an E chord.

Also although not discussed in the tutorial you can get this feel going with the open E chord and then venture up the neck to maybe add some higher melody notes.