In this fingerstyle guitar lesson, you’ll learn a really fun bluesy country drop D guitar riff. First, we’ll play through the riff slowly with tablature on the screen. After that, we have a full breakdown of the riff with extra guitar playing tips that you won’t want to miss.
In the later portion of this lesson, we’ll talk about fun ways to add dynamics to your fingerstyle so your playing sounds more interesting. We’ll also cover some really valuable improvising ideas that will help you get creative as you’re practicing with this lesson’s backing track.
In this guitar lesson, you’ll learn a 12 bar fingerstyle delta blues progression in double drop D tuning (DADGBD). This progression is best played at a slow speed and it has a really nice bluesy sound. We’ll work through the tablature two bars at a time until we cover all 12 bars. At the end, practice the 12 bar blues progression with me.
Pay close attention to my thumb that plucks the bass note line. The thumb plucks the bass note on each quarter note count and we’ll play various melody notes in between the bass line with our pointer and middle fingers. Overall, this is a great lesson for working on fingerstyle blues guitar.
The tablature download is available below the lesson video.
In this guitar lesson, we’ll work on some bluesy country fingerstyle guitar that’s inspired the song “The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie” written by Colter Wall. First you’ll learn the main chord progression that we’ll use to practice this type of fingerstyle guitar, and then we’ll work through a nice fingerstyle intro riff and a short instrumental break. During most of this guitar lesson, we’ll use a thumb pick to play an alternating bass line while we use our pointer and middle fingers to play a treble melody line in between the alternating bass notes. Also, be sure to follow Colter Wall on YouTube and you can find more of Colter’s music on his website.
“Railroad Bill” is an old traditional song based on a legend about a man in south Alabama during the post-Civil War era known as Railroad Bill. Sources suggest that Railroad Bill was a “Robin Hood” type of character that would steal from food trains and sell items to poor families at below market prices. As legend has it, Railroad Bill’s ghost is still roaming the L&N Railroad tracks to this day.
This song has a great melody that we’ll play using Chet Atkins and Merle Travis style picking. This is a challenging tune, but if you relax your right hand and take it slow, everything will fall into place with a bit of practice. We’ll focus on hybrid picking in this lesson, but feel free to play these arrangements with a thumb pick or finger plucking if you find that more comfortable. Download the tablature below the lesson video. Hope y’all enjoy learning this one!
