How to Practice the Blues

You’re rehearsing, not practising

Here’s how most people practise the blues. Put on a backing track in A, find the box at the fifth fret, and play for half an hour. The licks come out in roughly the order they always do. It feels like work because your hands are busy, but you’re not learning anything. You’re rehearsing what you can already do.

After a few years of that you sound fluent and a bit empty, and more hours don’t change it. The fix isn’t more material. It’s changing what you pay attention to while you play, because that’s what practice actually trains.

I’ve already written the scale books and the soloing systems. This one is about what you do with that material once you’ve got it.

What’s inside

How to Practice the Blues is six short, practical chapters. Everything is in A, starting from the fifth-fret box most players already know, with tab for every example and the interval of each note printed underneath it.

• Why the usual routine rehearses what you know instead of teaching you anything, and the one change that fixes it
• What each note of the minor pentatonic actually does over the I, IV and V chords, and why the same lick can sound great in bar 1 and flat in bar 5
• Call and response with yourself: phrases that ask, phrases that answer, and how much space to leave between them
• Playing ahead of, on and behind the beat, where to start a phrase, and how a note ends
• Practising without backing tracks, so you know where you are in the twelve bars without being told
• A half-hour session that puts it together, and how to tell your own voice from autopilot

Every chapter ends with short exercises, most of them ten minutes or less. There are notes pages at the back for the write-in ones.

This is a rewritten edition. The first version spent too long explaining the idea and not enough time showing you what to do about it. This one is shorter, more direct, and built around things you can play.

Who this is for

Players who already know the minor pentatonic box, can get through a twelve-bar, and have been playing along with backing tracks for a while, but still don’t sound like they mean it. It’s not a beginner’s guide, and it won’t give you new licks. It’ll change how you hear the ones you’ve got.

Also available as a bundle