# Music by Genre > Jazz/Blues Variants, Bossa, Choro, Klezmer >  blues - getting to the next level

## arbarnhart

I got the Steve James DVD and played the songs (which is about all I really learned from it). I have the "Mandolin Anthology" book by Bud Orr with a short section on movable chord patterns and scales. I can do 12 bar in various keys at varying tempos and throw in some riffs and turnarounds. But I feel like I am at a plateau, and it's a pretty low one. Blues with any complexity baffle me. I don't really have the rhythm technique I would like; I mostly strum varying stroke direction, tempo and "power/velocity". I had a breakthrough a while back, but the riffs I started intermingling are getting stale. Where to turn next? I have heard that Rich DelGrosso may have a DVD in the fall. And I know that I have to keep playing and have some patience. But right now I am just playing the same way; new song with different chords and words, but I play it the same way.

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## bluesmandolinman

I am no teacher in no way but I try to give you some inspirations -

- try walking boogie lines ( you can adapt them from bass or blues guitar books )it gives the tune a change from the strumming thing 

- as I said before : try shuffles !!! I bought a guitar book "the art of shuffle" which is so cool when you change between Chicago , New Orleans , Texas Style and so on , no need to play note-by-note just to get some variations on your rhythm

- go to one of the MANDOCRUCIAN´s Rhythm Workshops 

- listen to Johnny Young (Testament records for example)!!! he has killer rhythm blues mandolin , you will definetly enjoy and improve !

- if the DelGrosso DVD is out...get it !

and finally ...it´s allways the blues , you may at a certain degree allways have to repeat something of your licks etc , if this doesn´t satisfy you you better move on to other genres, the worst you can do is suffering from not proceeding with one thing , try something else for a longer period and than go back and try again and new things and ideas will come to mind 

don´t give up ! Blues Mandolin rules !

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## ira

amen and well said rene. the blues like any other genre has a certain number of stock phrases that are repeated at times, additionally , regardless of genre, each individual devlops certain signature sounds. don't be scared by this or be bummed by it either. embrace it and vary your themes through the suggestions above and others. i have played blues harp for years, and though i've developed a certain sound, when playing (especially live and with others) something interesting invevitably develops. let it happen my friend. da blues is a feeling, a mindset and a vibe that flows. certainly study and learn, but mostly, let it happen.:blues:

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## arbarnhart

I had some good (IMO) come out of those stale riffs tonight. My 9 yo daughter has been taking guitar for a few weeks and I was accompanying her with her lessons. We were playing "Are you sleeping, Brother John" in G, alternating between who played chords and who played melody. After a few rounds of it, I asked her about what other chords she has learned and can switch between best and the two she can do the best are G7 and C. So I had her do those at slow steady beat and I laid a few G scale riffs over them. She stopped after a couple of changes and called out to my wife, who was in the next room "Mom! Dad's making me play blues!"

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## ira

exellent story! teach your children well my friend!

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## arbarnhart

> I have heard that Rich DelGrosso may have a DVD in the fall.


I emailed Rich about this and it is not a DVD:

_Thanks for the inquiry. Hal Leonard will be publishing my book "Mandolin Blues: From Memphis to Maxwell Street" this winter. A CD is planned but not a DVD. I will announce if plans change._

I replied asking for a little more clarification about the book as the title sounds more like history than instruction and he added this:

_The book will have history but also plenty of great music. I am really excited about it._


I did come up with a plan to try to make more progress. Using the guitar tabs that are in TEF (TabEdit/TabView) and displaying standard notation instead of tabs. I need to improve my sight reading anyway. Playing by ear is my preference, but that seems to work much better when you know phrases/riffs that are key relative rather than just noodling for notes.

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## Perry

I think the best way to play the blues is to listen and imitate. For example while I can play Diving Duck Blues from the Steve James DVD I can't play it "exactly" like him. There's a certain timing and feel that those blues dudes get to their tremolo which I think can only be got by listening and imitating. I also noticed that a lot of the older blues guys seem to often play a major third and a flatted seventh and not alot of fancy chromatic jazzy slick lines. To me blues is one of the worst suited styles of music to be conveyed through tab or standard.

This often cited CD is a must have:

http://www.amazon.com/exec....=glance

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## arbarnhart

I have that CD and in fact, it is one of the things that made me question just how much progress I have really made. I figured I could play along with it, at least picking up the rhythms, without too much trouble. It's not going as well as I hoped. 

I don't want to just memorize songs from tab, but it helps me find the riffs and turnarounds much easier than a note by note approach.

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## Perry

OK I've been holding back on this ultimate blues mando trick:

downgrade your instrument and de-tune at least two of the pairs of strings for the authentic blues sound 

 

BTW that CD is way off A440. I think Johnny Young is kinda close. Also the Yank stuff can't be duplicated unless you tuned down to E (E B F# C#) like him.

Ry Cooder play some great blues mando.

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## arbarnhart

I have the "downgraded" instrument. I bought it with blues in mind. I have a Washburn oval A. I can do a G shuffle with a few riffs and a slow E progression with a lot of riffs that sound really good (my timing and accuracy could be better, but on the rare occasions that I hit the chord or riff just right the sound I am looking for is there). It's not that I can't play blues at all, just that I seem to be in a bit of a rut lately. I seemed to be progressing rapidly and it really tapered off. I have been playing a new (to me) D tune lately (Ira's mandolin blues) and I can't seem to figure out anything but just strumming it.

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## ira

just let it flow. pick around it a bit rather than strumming. try a little crosspicking, move to accents then to strumming here and there. don't get caught in the "guitar feel". i'm not there but i believe you may be thinking too much about it. sometimes a bit of noodling and fun goes a long way.
enjoy!

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## Perry

Here's what I like to do to get my blues goin':

set the metronome at 68 or so and play Evening Prayer Blues
over and over until it gets hypnotic...I mean for like 10 or 15 minutes....the one thing all good blues has is groove...hit those down beats no matter what happens in the middle

Evening Prayer is on Co-mando tab edit and I have an MP3 of Mike C. doing it at Kamp. I'd be glad to post it if some wants.

I been working on it's big cousin "Jimmy Fell off the Wagon"

perry

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## arbarnhart

Yes, I would like to hear the MP3 and I will hunt for the tab. Can't hurt to try something new; may lead me in a direction I am searching for (and Ira is right, I am probably searching too hard).

I picked up my guitar for the first time in quite a while. I figured that trying a few things I found online for it might help me; maybe if I got the rhythm and feel it would be easier to replicate on the mando. Despite how little I have played the guitar in a long time, that was annoyingly easy. I think it is going to help though.

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## kbarry

I have been following this thread with interest as I too have the James DVD and wanted more. I finally found the Complete Rhythm Guitar Guide for Blues Band by Larry McCabe which has a wealth of information on blues which works great on the mandolin. 

Even though I can read standard notation, I am much faster on tab so I made a translation matrix from guitar tab to mandolin so I can now read guitar tab. Since most of the instructional manuals are for guitar this was a good ability for me to learn.

This book is 158 pages of dense blues instruction and it is slow going but I feel like I am progressing and I am practicing much longer each day.

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## kbarry

Here is a track that I made (called Slide'in 12, you may have to scroll down) that used the doublestop 5/6/b7 progression that is covered in the above book. #Simple, but a lot of fun to play.


http://www.onlinejam.org/bluesharp/btracks.php

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## arbarnhart

I bid on the book; if I lose I will just buy it from a used seller on Amazon for $2 more.

I listened to your track. That is almost exactly what I was referring to as my G shuffle, except I play it at a faster tempo without the slide. Great link, BTW.

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## Perry

here's that Evening Prayer Blues by Mike Compton. A G blues lesson to last a lifetime! Scroll down to the bottom.


http://www.paletta.net/pages/809909/index.htm

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## arbarnhart

Great song - listening to it full speed, it's much more of a blue grass feel, but when I set the tempo at your suggested speed, I felt like I just wandered into the bayou.

This thread has been a big help.

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## kbarry

arbarnhart:

Here is the conversion from Guitar tab to Mandolin tab that I made to be able to play songs in the Rhythm Guitar book:

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## arbarnhart

Are you doing that on the fly or did you transcribe them into PowerTab (the free tab editor) or something? I bought (actually "won", I guess) the book, but won't receive it for a few days. Are the tabs in the hard copy? I may just go the notation route, though if you already have them transcribed and are willing to share with another book owner...

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## kbarry

Since it is a rhythm book, most of the songs are chords, so just use your mando favorites and everything sounds great. Once you have all the I7, IV7, and V7 chords you can play along (I am just starting to get into the X6 and X9 chord fragments section which is getting harder to work on the mandolin. On the single string songs, I do it on the fly on some and others I just pencil in the mando tab (so I don't have much to share here). 

I also to developed some doublestop 5/6/b7 chord progression for the mandolin that work similar to the guitar ones in the book. They were used on the song I post above. I will try to get them in an electronic form.

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## arbarnhart

Are you talking about the progression where you play two strings with the chord's root note on the lower pitched string and you play the 5 at the same fret on the other string, then move up two frets to the 6 and one more to the b7? That one I know; it's pretty much my favorite rut to get stuck in.

Here's another form I am working with now. Ira's blues song is G7/D7/A7 and you can play all three chords with your 2nd and 3rd fingers in the same relative position. Start with the open D7 (1st finger G/2, 2nd A/3, 3rd E/2) then raise your first finger and slide both the 2nd and 3rd fingers back one fret and it's a G7. From the D7, if you slide the 2nd and 3rd fingers up one fret to A/4 E/3 and drop your first finger to bar both the G and D string at the 2nd fret, you have your A7. I have to make it this easy to attempt to sing. #

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## ira

hey andy, based on your posts here and elsewhere, you are far into the "next level" in terms of what you understand and are attempting. i could not even try to put into theoretical and therefore theory-to pallication framework, the concepts you are discussing. as i am just playing chords/notes that sound and feel right.
keep on trucking!

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## kbarry

Andy:

Yes thats the one I am using and the X7 chords you are describing. #I agree you have to get it simple before attempting singing or harp playing over the chords. #Here is a chart of the 5/6/b7 double stops for others to use since you have figured this one out.

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## arbarnhart

Ira,

I talk a good game #

One of the things that frustrates me is that I can speak the language (up to a point; much of the jazz dialect is beyond my comprehension) but beyond the basics I can't do that much with that knowledge.

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## arbarnhart

One more form I have started using (I did it a lot last night, jamming with some better players and falling behind) is an inverted power chord for the I. Simple example is G. The easy power chord is the open G and D strings, but I was doing something chop like and damping. A good power C is barring the G/D strings at fret 5 and the power D is right above it at fret 7. And if you do G/7 and D/5, you have an inverted power G. You can do most of the rhythm on 4 notes that are on 2 sequential strings only 2 frets apart. And 3 of the 4 notes are part of the blues scale, so even if you miss a change you have a 75% chance of playing something that sounds okay anyway. I like those odds. I only use this to find the rhythm, and then I would use it as a "stepping off point" to try other things (related double stops, riffs, shuffles, more complete chord forms using the other strings, etc). This only works well in situations where you have multiple rhythm instruments. A couple of times I ended up being the only source of rhythm while doing this and it sounded okay and gave the guy soloing something to work with, but it needed more depth. I am finding it is a good way for me to drop into an unfamiliar song and it's a good place to retreat to when I try something that doesn't work.

Oh, and I lean over my mando and noodle on the D string to find the key so I know where to park to bounce around between the notes. If I don't find it at or below fret 7, I switch over to the G string. I play with guitarists, so it is quite often E. That's why I start on the D string.

I can't say for sure whether I just offered something useful or admitted a bad habit...

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## Perry

a nice blues G chord:

0
5  then move it down a half step
3
0


a power A chord:

0
0
5
2

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## arbarnhart

I am not sure I was clear. G was just an example. There were times I found the root noodling and didn't bother with thinking about what note it was or what the IV and V were. I just started playing relative to it. While doing the real simple rhythm I avoided open strings because I was doing a "blues chop" (for lack of a better description). We had 2 guitars, me and a banjo. No drums, no bass. So I was doing sort of a "heartbeat/metronome" and every now an then stepping off of it to throw in a riff or shuffle.

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## Perry

Oh I got you; I was just posting a cool G blues chord
that I have perhaps never seen in any of the mando books.....

the A chord is somewhat on topic to your last post because it contains no 3rd....and is thus a flexible chord 

really nice blues two note chords (don't play the open strings) are as follows (letters are chords)

G C  D
0 0  0 
0 0  0 
3 2  4
4 3  5


This is the "famous" 3 flat 7 inversion; sometimes referred to as an organ type riff and can be transposed all over the place

for example the same thing on the middle two strings:

G C D
0 0 0 
2 1 3
3 2 4 
0 0 0

So you can play one chorus on the bottom two string then move it to the next pair of strings on the next chorus to keep it interesting

there is no root here so it's great when a bass player is playing because it really cuts through....I use it on electric guitar in loud full band situations and it's amazing how those two note chords cut through the "din" so to speak...it sounds good when there is no bass player too because the root is implied. The third and seventh really define the chord

Many jazzers work out a road map to their tunes by finding the 3rds and 7ths to all the chords in a given tune...so much more interesting then zeroing in on the root all the time

note: the fifth is often the first chord tone omitted in a chord because it has no effect in defining the chord

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## arbarnhart

Thanks for the longer explanation. I misunderstood and thought you were just telling me where there was a better G than in my example (and there are lots of better ones if you know specifically what chord you are playing and can remember and get to a good form; I can't always do that yet). Your comment about dropping the 5th is interesting. I have also been using an E blues variation where the E is played on the G/1 and D/2, which is a 3rd and root and I play the A and B at the 2nd and 4th frets (barring G and D). I was surprised that it sounded as good as it did with the E inverted and missing the 5th. Not quite the Yank sound, but about as close as I have come in a standard tuning. The biggest problem I have with no 5th is I don't know how to get a good shuffle started. That's one of the issues that caused me to start this thread. When I got out of my 1-5 comfort zone, all I could do is strum.

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## Perry

It's so hard to describe this stuff using words but I'll try:

instead of the 1/5 shuffle as you descibe you can use the two note "3 flat 7 inversions" that I descibe above and play kind of stacatto pulse groove on the one and three beats...it's very cool

I wish I had time to post an mp3

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## arbarnhart

By the 1/5 shuffle, I meant the 1/5-&gt;1/6-&gt;1/b7 shuffle or derivatives thereof. Playing a two note chord and then walking one of the strings to play variants. With a 3/b7, I don't know which one to walk or where to step.

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## Perry

I know what you mean by the shuffle...often referred to as the Chuck Berry thang. I use the shuffle often but it could be like handcuffs to the solist if used in the wrong circumstance

You don't shuffle with the 3b7 or walk or step; rather a percussive pulse all with the same inversion then move it up for the next chord...if you notice all three chords occur within a four fret span....very rhythmic....very effective...and very nice to solo against too..and like I said it really "pops" out of the mix

G
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4
da  da  da  da  da  da  da  da

A sound byte would be worth a thousand words

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## arbarnhart

I know I don't always need to shuffle. I feel like I need to be doing something besides just the chords, though. Right now, one song I am working on is "Rooster Blues". It's one of those where you thump the chord good and then there is a full line of vocals before another thump, another vocal line and then finally more steady playing. It drives me nuts to not play.




> I know what you mean by the shuffle...often referred to as the Chuck Berry thang. 
> 
> A sound byte would be worth a thousand words #


Yes, that is the shuffle I mean. It comes in a couple of other flavors besides berry, but it's mostly a matter of whether you use just the 6th, just the b7, or both, which beats and what tempo. I get a lot of mileage out of those combinations, but other than coming off the 5 and specifically using the 6 and b7, I don't know how to do it. I am pretty hear other variants.

I should try to record a few snippets as well. I tried the 2 note chords you suggested above an it seemed to have more of a jazz flavor, but I was playing alone and I am not sure I really get the stacatto suggestion.

The shuffle is not the crux of my frustration. Adding picked treble notes as part of the rhythm is baffling me. Sometimes open chords (like G7 and D7) sound pretty good in arpeggios, but there is more to it than that. A sound clip would make it easier to explain, but it's that "bom-pom deedle-a-dee" rhythm.

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## arbarnhart

> here's that Evening Prayer Blues by Mike Compton. A G blues #lesson to last a lifetime! Scroll down to the bottom.
> 
> 
> http://www.paletta.net/pages/809909/index.htm


I started playing some of this over the weekend. In the first part of the song, there is a drone on the G with a walk up and down the D & A. I was playing it over and over at about half speed and then started improvising a way to end it as a first part and a different second part. I had intended to push on and learn more of it as written. But I was getting really comfortable with the flow of it and one time instead of starting back over it's almost like my fingers chose to break some new ground instead. I am sure the second part I am playing is probablu no more original than the first. Once I get really comfortable with all of it, I will have to record it. It's probably the best I have sounded completely solo.

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## arbarnhart

My running monologue continues...




> I have been following this thread with interest as I too have the James DVD and wanted more. I finally found the Complete Rhythm Guitar Guide for Blues Band by Larry McCabe which has a wealth of information on blues which works great on the mandolin. 
> 
> Even though I can read standard notation, I am much faster on tab so I made a translation matrix from guitar tab to mandolin so I can now read guitar tab. Since most of the instructional manuals are for guitar this was a good ability for me to learn.
> 
> This book is 158 pages of dense blues instruction and it is slow going but I feel like I am progressing and I am practicing much longer each day.


I got the book and started working with it some. It really is a good blues guitar book. If I had found it years ago I probably would have played guitar more. For most of it, just playing the same/similar chord on the mando seems more straightforward than trying to transpose tab. I am finding the "one line rhythm" pages especially useful. I am playing them straight from the notation as if it were fiddle notation (really an octave higher) in the C scale starting at G/5, paying attention to the dsplacement from G/5 (like one string higher and 3 frets up or whatever) so I can move them around into other keys. The CD has great backing tracks for practicing lead also.

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