Chords for acoustic blues lesson - southern blues with sliding

Hey, what's up?
Marty [A#] here with GuitarJams.com, hanging out with [C#m] Ben Powell.
[A#m] Howdy.
Ben plays traditional blues, fingerstyle blues, [N] I would say.
I mean, you've got your own spin on it.
Yep.
You know, your Southern California spin.
That's right.
It's constantly evolving.
_ But he's got a cool exercise.
You can explain it, but anyway, you can check out his music
down there.
He's a cool dude.
Thank you, Marty.
Thanks.
He's a friend of mine.
So [D] anyway, you go do your thing, man.
I just want to show, I was just teaching this to [N] a student of mine this morning, and I mentioned
it to Marty and thought this would be something good that you might enjoy.
_ Basically, anybody
interested in learning how to play [B] bottleneck guitar or fingerstyle blues, whatever you
want to call it, here's a little something that'll help you get started. _
Presuming that you already have a little bit going, _ basically this exercise will aid in
you mastering the alternate thumb or constant thumb.
There's a couple different names for
[D] it, but basically you want to get a groove going.
[G#] _ [B] So this particular exercise will help
you _ basically be able to play this style of music where it sounds like you're doing two
things at once.
You've got your thumb going, holding down the [D] groove, _ and then you're going
to [F#m] pick the melody with these two [Bm] fingers on the treble strings.
And that's basically
the gist of it.
And there's [D#] ways to go about learning that, and this is a good place to start.
Can you talk about your tuning?
[G#] I sure can.
Yeah.
A lot [F] of these songs that I play in this style, and the tradition is you can use open tuning.
And a good place to start is open D or open G.
They're [C#] both very popular.
There's a ton
of stuff out there to _ [F] help you _ evolve [B] in this style using those two tunings.
_ Basically,
if you're_
The one you're in right now?
Yeah, I'm in an [D] open D.
Okay, you said that already, right?
Okay.
I don't know if I did, but this is basically how you get there from standard tuning is
you drop both of your E's [Dm] to D, so you go down a whole step to D.
_ _ And then this goes
from [A] B to an A, so just down a whole step.
Then your G [F#] string goes down half a step from
G to an F sharp, okay?
And then your D stays [C] the same, _ and [A] then your A string stays the
same, [D] and you've got your E dropped to a D.
_ Giving you a beautiful open D chord, and that's
essentially what an open tuning means.
It's an open chord.
[F#] And what you can do in that
when you're in an open tuning, [D] you kind of get your thumb_
I'll just give you a quick
little demo.
_ I'll show you how you can start a groove. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Okay, so [C] it might look like that's
a complicated thing, but really all it is is you've got your alternate thumb going,
[Dm] establishing a nice groove.
[F#] And then it's something to do in an open D tuning on the
fourth fret, [G] on the fifth fret, [Dm] and the seventh fret.
Okay, those are notes that are going
to work real nicely in this tuning.
So you put your thumb on it.
[F#] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [Dm] _
Okay, so what we're
doing there is we're moving what's called the [D] pinch.
You're striking these two strings,
the thickest and [Dm] the thinnest, at the same time, and then coming down, _ _ and then another
[G] pinch, _
[D] and then another pinch.
And that thumb never stops.
You can even take it back down. _ _ _ _ _
_ So it's not extremely musical, but it's a little musical exercise that you can do to
help you get your pinch going. _ _ _ _
Train going by for the blues.
Oh yeah, _ you've got a little
train in the blues.
That's why I play so many train songs. _ _
That's funny.
I live right by
the train tracks.
[G] On the wrong side of the tracks, [D] _ but_
Again, that's an exercise that
you can do forever until _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ _ it's_
[D] _
So it's all just based off the_
[Dm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Am] _ Get that nice clean
sustain.
[D] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ [Dm] _ Nice little exercise.
[B] _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
These clanks, [B] the better.
_ [C#] I can get into technique with
you, and I'll do that on other videos.
[A#] We'll cover the basics of [F#] slide technique.
But I
just wanted to show you that nice little exercise to get your thumb going.
Thumb, get your groove.
Then it's nice [D#m] _
_ little_
[D#] Pinch, [Dm] pinch. _
_ _ _ [D] And the _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [F#m] _ _ [E] way I operate that is your thumb's responsible
up here, and [G] you've got your index finger for your B, and your middle finger [F#] for your
thinnest string.
And then I use this finger for other [Dm] stuff, but that's a [F#] general thing
that can help you get [N] started, and it's a lot of fun to play this style of music, I'll
tell you.
Ben, thanks for the cool lesson.
Oh man, my pleasure.
I hope it helps.
[D#] I hope _
_ _ _ [C#] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [D] it helps.
I hope _ it helps.
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helps.
See you guys later. _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _