Play Guitar Like Joe Bonamassa with 5 Essential Blues Tricks

That's, that's the one that everyone wants to learn, I guess. Today we're doing a Joe Bonamassa deep dive, and I have a theory. I think a lot of guitarists are put off from learning Joe Bonamassa's songs because they can be very intimidated by his fantastic playing. And Joe's a guy who's been on YouTube a lot, he's been such an advocate for the guitar community, you can tell how much of an enthusiast he is. But therefore we've all seen him play just fantastically, such speed, such phrasing, and what I want to offer in this video is 5 songs and 5 ideas that can be a real way in, even if you're a beginner. We're gonna look at 5 songs, we're gonna look at Drive, we're gonna look at Slow Gin, The Ballad of John Henry, Blues Deluxe, and I'll play the Blues for you. And these are gonna act as a roadmap, starting at total beginner, three chord acoustic guitar blues with a simple lead line that anyone can learn, right up to improvising your own blues styles freely, and I'm gonna give you some ideas of exactly how you can do that. Let's make a start with my first song for us. We'll cover this first riff in a second, but I just want to cover the chords first of all. If you're a total beginner. So, it's an E minor chord. It goes to A minor. Back to E minor. It's then to B minor and if you play a B minus 7, which is B7 without the first finger. Or you could play a B minor like this. Eve's totally fine. Ma We have 77. 45. Now Joe Bonamassa and every blues or jazz-based musician ever. Never plays the same thing live as they will do on the recording. So one thing he does a lot more live, he's played a lot more of this. minor chord and a lot more of the power chord. To kind of fill it out a bit more but give that. And this is, this is where you can't help but learn stuff from looking at Joe Bonomassa's stuff because you've got that simple boom bam bam bam. And then you have exactly the same thing as string down and all the embellishments that you've added also still work, so. that still works. And then when we get to the end of this riff, it's literally just. The B root note, when we're over the B B minor chord. B minor, 1 and 2 and 3. And again, Gareth's first comment when we first started this stream was, you know, brave title, taking on any Joe Barnha Massa songs. That's not even really a solo, that's, that's the solo, that's, that's it. But a really cool thing that Joe's done. Is um provide. Official backing tracks on YouTube and he even gives a bit of a lesson beforehand as well. Uh, so it's Joe Bonamassa TV, I say he's not got his own YouTube channel, uh, he does basically, but he doesn't do, you know, regular weekly content, he's not, he's not like me, he's a touring band, but whenever he's got an album out or something bush, oh you know he's gonna be doing some stuff on there. We've gotta count him. So the other thing that's available here, so you've got your different E minor pentatonic positions, cause he's saying. You know, play over this jam track, but he's directly encouraging you not to play it exactly like the original. He's encouraging start off on. Position 1, you know, then go to shape. Shape 3. To shape for Very cool stuff. Um, so I highly recommend that one, that is Drive. Let's have a look now at Ballad of John Henry. This way of playing the G chord. So thumb on the root. Uh, 3rd finger where it would be on the Hendrixy style. Octave. Someone was wanting some help with the Hendrix chords. Here's a great thing that Bonamassa uses. And there's the 5th, so that's the root bird 5th. On your Hendrix cord, no middle finger. Sounds great. But what we're doing is learning about this position of E minor, E minor pentatonic superhighway. Just follow the dots, couldn't be simpler. 03. 5, slide to 7. That's just on the dot or the inlay frets on string 6. It's the first scale we cover in my beginner's course. Then 5 to 7 gets us to the octave. 5 again, gives us that minor third, which we often wanna. Bend down with the inside of your first finger, not the tip. Don't bend down like this. It's not the bluesy technique, it's like this. That's what we learned. That's how we bend strings in Joe Bonamassa style blues world. And then we have this kind of octave idea. You know, this really sounds like. Like superstition or um. Do do do You know, like wild celly play that funky music, right? Which is probably why you tuned down in the original. But either way, so your notes are. And then that G. To an A. And the only notes stringing out there is string 6, string 4, and string 2. We're muting 3 and 5. With the thumb, with the middle finger. And the index with the. Uh, the first string is muted by the index finger here. Really cool way of doing essentially power chords but making them sound different. Now, from that original tab, I think it's doing this. Oh, we should at least learn how to do it. This is fret 4 and 5. And here, you can bend up string 4, but don't bend up string 3. Or do this cos it just kind of sounds out of tune. And then of course the real thing that we use this for is just like one long jam track, which you know you can do. Uh, you know, stick this in a looper pedal. So for example, That's coming out of my looper. There you go, there's a Joe Bonamassa style solo, I guess. There's a couple of key things I'm doing there. But those are the five positions of the minor pentatonic. Now there, there's different, they're not made at even, these five positions. So if we go through it, we've got that first one. This is, this is one of the few where because uh with shape one, because you, your root note is on string 6 and 1, it makes a lot of sense to learn that one octave 1. That makes a lot of sense. For shape too, it really doesn't because the lowest octave that you can play is here. So this one isn't very useful, other than. Literally using the Hendrix lick of going from here to here, and using it with the open string. So forget, honestly, forget about those lower notes going. They're just, they're just not that useful. What's way more useful is then going the next one to here. And this, this octave's pretty useful, we've done this already. That one there, that C shape. That's really useful. This is a George Harrison like style Ecord. Really, really useful. Uh, the next one's an obvious one, it's power chords. Uh, the next one is relatively straightforward because you've again got this repetition of just hitting the 12th rep. Which is the same as shape 1, so shape 5. The things you remember in there is 10 and 10, 9 and 9. And that was that position 5. But the thing that we highlight is the root notes, cos it's all about knowing your octaves. Most people who are trying to learn their pentagonics haven't yet learned their octaves. And you've gotta be able to find, if I say a note like E, you've gotta be able to find 6 E's per 12 frets. Otherwise, you're not gonna be able to use, even if you can remember the five shapes in a minor pentatonic or one shape, you're not gonna be able to target notes and make it sound any good. That's the real trick. So when we're in E, think of your E octaves, and a riff like this. All I Absolutely perfect to that because one great thing you can test yourself with before trying to learn the solos or trying to learn how to improvise over it, just try and play that riff in as many different positions as possible. OK, let's reduce that riff down to. Just the root notes at the bottom, so for example. There it is, in his nets one logical position for him. At 7 and 9. Another logical position is here, 12 frat and 14. Notice one thing I'm doing there is suddenly starting to play lighter. Something Bonamassa does all the time. Harder position doing it here. What else have we got? We got here? Mostly in shape 5. Going briefly up to shape one. What else can we do it? Perfect way of doing it. And then another thing Bonamassa, probably what he's most known for with like solos, and we'll cover this bit in the last few songs we'll look at, is like find a lick and repeat cycling licks. So when he does like a fast run, he'll often like. Like repeat it too long. And um let me show you with a little bit more gain. And do this I do it way too much and do it sometimes quieter. Much more of this stuff is covered in my lead guitar courses and also intermediatele. We've started to cover a lot of this now. There's more to come in the remaining modules, but a lot of it's already there, it's just your positions of your pentatonic, octave finding, how to improvise in the key of E and A. E minor pentatonic superhighway, A minor pentatonic superhighway. That'll get you through most of it, that will get you. I'll get used to that. So, uh, next one. Let's have a look at uh Ballad of John Henry cos this has a couple of licks that I wanna steal. And the dogs just started kicking off, which is quite funny. Got excited over the Blues, or maybe I got excited over the Blues and the dogs like yeah man I wanna be excited too. Now the cords here, they do, they do matter but you just think that a minor pentatonic's mostly what we're sticking to here. And that's what he does when he goes. That's kind of what he plays there. Relatively standard stuff, it's this one that really makes you go, ooh, you know. This does technically change the scale, but it, it fits perfectly into everything that you'd already know if you've ever played the minor pentatonic, if you've ever done this. Even at that kind of speed. Rather than always playing this note. Start playing this one And bend up to that one. So it's a half step bend. Straight away you're like, oh, that sounds like it doesn't sound. Pentatonic, you've gotta remember, if you stick too much to it or don't add phrasing and vibrato and bends, sounds very oriental. Unless we add in. Very much tied to how John Mayer plays solos, very much tied to Dave Gilmour, and the way he plays solos as well. But moving that back to what we've done so far. That's the one to get, and it's a down pick and then an up pick. And get plenty of overdrive on. And that's all shape. I've stuck there to shape one minor pentatonic. Up to shape, top of shape 2. Which is where that is, OK. Um, it's a really cool song. Let's, uh, let's again put it back in track on and. Kind of jam along to it, right, uh it's John Henry, so. So on and so forth and so forth, right, uh, couple, let's go really, really bluesy now, even more bluesy than that. He's got a song called Blues Deluxe and then I'll play the blues for you. Uh, let's have a listen to Blues Deluxe, the OG this is. This is him doing it live. That is him. Playing a G note. With tremolo picking with down the Ups. Like that. Let's have a listen to this. Great thing to work on if you, if you're trying to build your speed over different, different notes. How fast can you play one note? How relaxed can you do this? I've done a pretty full in-depth lesson on tremolo picking or like fast alternate picking to do, you know, yeah. Very much about small emotion. We'll see where he goes from there. Gorgeous chord, you didn't hear it, I didn't let it play. Is this You're Gary Moore, Peter Green style blues. Oh, there we go. That is a blues in sea. Lots of chromatic moves in the chords. That's straight out of a uh. That's straight out of Rock and Roll by Led Zeppelin. Oh just. You can hear how much that's inspired by Need Your Love So Bad, er, Fleetwood Mac, Gary Moore, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. um but this is in a different key, you can see. However you want to do it, that's. Basically walking up a C major chord, C, E, G, add an A. And then to see, uh, not rocket science, but what is he, Adam? Well, um, we've got a backing track that I can kind of leave on. And then he's one. That's, that's the one that everyone wants to learn, I guess. Alright, let's think of it this way, let's just play a C chord, 12 frets up. OK. And on that 13th threat. We have a route. To a 5th here, cause that's a G, you know that's a G because you can play a C chord like this. And we bend the G up, which is a 5th, to a flattened 7th. You know, kind of like you. That's the stuff, so. Well that's the lick together, let's make sure we get it really clear. So with a chromatic move in there, uh, let's do it with just pentatonic. So that's root, flat and 3rd, 4th, 5th. Dominant 7, so. Just pentatonic though. Let's have a go at playing some of that. I remember the key with old school blues, like major dominance. Is always major 3rd over the C chord or on the way up a phrase. And then because of that dominant 7th F chord, flat and 3rd. Always minor pentatonic. On the way down, I've taught that extensively in the new intermediate course, in the lessons that are already up. It's so key to blues, we've got some backing tracks for it. Check it out, I think it's about level 4, maybe 5. let's go for the backing track now though. This is Blues Deluxe. Minor. Major. Let's do that, lick. Now let me teach you that chord as well, so we started off doing this on the live version of it. Straight out of Need Your Love So Bad. Need someone's hand. Um, so that is, it's like playing a F major 7 star thing really, you're on. That's on 10, 9, and 8, and 8. And then you're over to see, Major chord. And the one thing I'm always, the one thing I'm always reminding myself of and trying to really do over these kind of slow. Try not to get too stuck into, well, definitely don't get stuck into. You have to go like slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, slow, brave. You're really trying to go as syncopated as possible. Almost like you can imagine a jazz singer kind of scatting a bit doom doom dabu dab dap bad, you know, the, the odd odder. The more odd rhythms you can use, often the better because that kind of gets you into that more expressive territory. Especially when coupled with some longer notes. Nothing fast. I was just, I was almost taking the mickey out of a blues solo then, I'll be honest. I was taking. Taking artistic liberties, and it's amazing how much you can, you can kind of get away with it, get away with it, and then you can't, and that's why I had to find, when I was like, oh, I've done it too far, find an octave. Always comes back to finding octaves, it really does. Uh, here's a similar kind of uh thing to that. Find, I'll play the blues for you. Beautiful. That's the same lick again. Uh, where would that be? Beautiful. There's some ideas of how a regular player can play like Joe Bonamassa without getting too distracted by the faster fingers. Um It's really important, and I think I've given their 5 great starting points. To The regular guitar player. Um, if you're total, if you're a total beginner, stick to Drive for now and Ballad of John Henry in the Key of E. And you're gonna be good, you're gonna get a lot of what you enjoy from Joe Bonamassa under your fingers. If you want more than that, then you have to start learning some of the solos, you know, note for a moment, maybe some of the live versions of the solos because often they are my, my favourites. And then you might start to piece together how you can improvise over it in that style. And if you want more help with that, the new intermediate guitar course is a great resource I think, um. Perhaps a more complete resource for the lead guitar playing is the lead guitar syllabus that we've got up on the website already. It's 9 levels. It's got style studies for Dave Gilmore and Jimmy Page, and Billy Gibbons, and Jimi Hendrix and um Tony Iommi. And I think a lot of people underutilize those that are actually um hardcore members of the website and really wanted to dig into their. Solos and lead playing. I don't underuse that lead, lead guitar course, if you wanna be a lead guitarist, it's there, that's what it's there for. So we'll leave it there, thank you so much for um. Checking out what we have on offer tonight. As soon as I do have them in front of me, if you have liked a lot of the um you know octave finding, let's go into the key of E. That's the uh Thing that noisy, this is the guitar chord compass, and then when you change key to. Say D, or we're suddenly in the key of C. There's your cage shapes which match up to the pentatonics, and that can be a very good way of navigating the neck. Um, yeah, really like all of, all of Noisy clans stuff. Thank you very much guys, thanks for bearing with us tonight. I think it's got some really good stuff there. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye.