Playing Blues Guitar - The Father Of The Blues

(Note: If you’re interested in the Blues, visit: Beginner Blues Guitar)

The first instrumental hit playing blues guitar was in 1912, called “Memphis Blues,” composed by W. C. Handy, also known as the Father of the Blues. Handy was born in 1873, in Alabama, and began his entertainment career in the 1890s. His first gigs were touring with all black musical troupes. After serving as bandleader of the Mahara’s Minstrels for four years, in 1903 Handy moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi where he first heard the Blues. In his book, he describes his introduction to first hearing the blues guitar as “the weirdest music I had ever heard” (Handy, 74). It was from then that Handy emerged from being a beginner blues guitar player, into a world-renowned Blues guitar musician. In 1914, this once beginner blues guitar player composed “St. Louis Blues,” considered one of the most popular blues guitar songs ever recorded.

While Hendy is considered the Father of the Blues, B.B. King, born Riley King, in Indianola, Mississippi in 1925, is by all accounts considered the King of the Blues. When King was approximately nineteen years old, he started to take beginner blues guitar lessons from his cousin, Bukka White, a well-known Blues musician in Memphis, Tennessee. While working as a disk jockey in an all black music format radio station, Riley took on the name “Blues Boy,” which eventually was shortened to B.B. King’s first national record debut was in 1951, when his “Three O’ Clock Blues” was released. By the 1960s, his haunting guitar playing and trilling blues guitar style, was influencing not only blues guitarists, but also emerging rock musicians. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, King inspired a new musical format - long guitar solos, which practically became the standard for most rock and blues guitar songs. Apparently, this musical style is attributed to King’s inability to sing and play guitar at the same time, and hence the non-vocal, long guitar solo was born. For more information on the full biographies of these and other musicians and how they began their careers as beginner blues guitar players, please see the links below.

Interested in beginner blues guitar? Click here to learn How To Play Blues Guitar!

Bibliography:

Handy, W. C. Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1941. Reprint, New York: Da Capo, 1991.

Freeland, David. “King, B.B.” Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Popular Musicians Since 1990. Ed. Stephen Wasserstein, Ken Wachsberger, and Tanya Laplante. Vol. 1. Detroit: Schirmer Reference, 2004. 361-362.

Guitar History

Guitar History

The guitar also known as the violao is a stringed instrument which when said strings are plucked or strummed, produce sound.  Guitars can come with varying numbers of strings for example 6 strings, 12 strings, 4, 7, 8, 10 also are not that scarce.

The guitar or violao has been played in many different and very varied styles of music including but not limited to rock, pop, flamenco, blues, country and folk music. To create an acoustic sound involves production of the tone via the vibration of the string when either strummed or plucked, the sound itself being produced in the guitar body, this obviously doesn’t wholly apply to the electric guitar where the sound is produced quite differently. In this case an guitar amplifier will produce the actual guitar sound.

A luthier is a man or woman that makes and repairs guitar strings.  Guitar strings can be made from either nylon or steel.  Everybody has their personal preference.  Various sounds can be produced on a guitar depending on the materials used in the guitar construction.

The history of the guitar can be traced back in various forms about 5,000 years.

There are two major types of guitars or violao’s

The acoustic violao guitar is made from a soundboard, which is used to actually produce the sound, this is present in the front of the guitar body in the form of a piece of wood.  No outside device or arrangement is required to produce the sound.  This enables the acoustic violao quieter than other orchestra instruments and sometimes you’ll find that an external amplifier is used  to enable the sound to be more audible to help it to match the sound created of other band instruments being used in conjunction with the acoustic guitar. Some of the latest violao guitars are provided with a range of pick-ups for amplification and modification of the raw acoustic guitar sound.

Various acoustic, violao guitars type sub categories include Classical guitars; Flamenco guitars, Steel string guitars (including the flat top or `folk` guitar), Twelve string guitars; Arch-top guitars; Renaissance guitars or Baroque guitars; Resonator, Resophonic or Dobro guitars, Russian guitars, Acoustic bass guitars, Tenor guitars, Harp guitars, Guitar Battente and Extended range guitars.

Now, let’s talk briefly about Electric Guitars

Electric guitar bodies are typically solid, although they can be also semi hollow or indeed, hollow.  The electric guitar sound without any form of amplification is somewhat dulled to say the least, but when a  guitar amp is added the difference in sound quality is as different as chalk and cheese!  Obviously therefore it goes without saying that a guitar amplifier is an integral component of the electric guitar and the electric guitar with an amp is like a car without tires.

The steel strings when plucked or strummed are converted into electric signals by electro-magnetic pick-up’s which are relayed to the electric guitars amplifier using either a cable or a radio transmitter.

The sound produced by the electric guitar is very often modified, this is achieved either with electronic devices or through the natural valve distortion..  There are two types of pick-ups.  Double line or single line pick-ups. Each of these pick-ups can either be passive or active.  The electric guitar sound can quite literally be an electrifying experience as no doubt you know only too well for yourself from listening to your own guitar anthems.

Most typically, guitar players will pluck the strings of the electric violao with their dominant, strong hand.  The other hand is used on the guitar neck frets pressing and depressing the guitar strings as appropriate for the sound that is to be produced as part of the guitar music.

Here is a brief list of the main violao guitar components

They include of course the guitar headstock, nut, guitar fretboard, the frets themselves, truss rod, inlay’s, guitar neck heel or neck point, the guitar strings, we don’t want to be forgetting them of course, the guitar body and last but not least the guitar pickups.

Further accessories which can vastly increase one’s playing pleasure and versatility are the guitar plectrum, which you may also know as the vialao pick or guitar pick, which of course is used for ‘picking’ the strings.  This is made up from a hard plastic or wood, then there are slides which can be used for the creation of a glissando effect heard in blues and rock musical genres, finally the copatasto used for changing the pitch of open strings.

Hopefully you found these guidance notes to be of some use to you aiding and adding to your knowledge of the violao or guitar.  Please do carry on looking around our guitar website, it’s awesome to have you here!