JFRocks.com mini guitar lessons page

The technique lessons featured on this page are designed to be for Electric guitar. Most of the lessons covered here however will transfer to acoustic without any issue. This lesson page will be updated as often as possible. The other pages on JFRocks and JFRocks UNplugged keep me rather busy and I try to keep all technique lessons to CD ROM. What this page will do a lot of the time is expand upon lessons covered on various CD ROMs. If this is the case the Category below will state which CD ROM the lesson is expanding on. I hope you enjoy these mini lessons as I call them and remember all lessons from the past are located on the Lesson Archives page.

*Remember Effect suggestions are my suggestions for the home player. Usually suggestions are geared for a low budget.

Lesson Features

The song track

The Jam along track

The Video Guitar Lesson

Lesson MP3 song track

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This Lesson's difficulty level 1-10 scale

This lesson is on one of my personal favorite Blues open tunings. Open "D", this is basically a D major chord tuning. The tuning is D, A, D, F#, A, D. Root, 5th, Root, 3rd, 5th, Root. Pretty straight forward.

On the video I will show you how to tune to it but really it's not that hard you just need to know where your notes are that's all.

There are some basic rules for playing slide and using an open tuning. I cover those rules in graphic detail on the Blues Explained CD ROM which I personally think I did a bang up job of explaining Blues guitar on. Apparently many other think so too as I'm still getting mp3 files emailed to me of Blues you guys are creating thanks to the CD ROM. I'll probably at some point create a site visitor mp3 page and put all of these great sound files up for everyone to check out. For now we have our hands full with the site and what we're doing but I'm sure in the future we will get around to it. I'm thrilled as always by everyone's enthusiasm and hunger for learning. It's totally awesome.

This open D tuning is a very recognizable classic Blues tunings. This is the tuning used for the slide parts in the movie Crossroads with Steve Vai and that Ralph what's his name guy. (not the Brittany Spears movie) Although I am waiting for Brittany Spears to make a movie called Spinal Tap so she can completely ruin my life and kill ALL off any remaining guitar memories from my childhood. lol

Anyway, this tuning is instantly recognizable as bluesy. See lesson below for both riffing and some patterns to stick to, in order to play it safe with these types of tunings.

Again if this type of playing is your thing, I highly suggest further studies and I do have some killer material and helpful patterns and theory on my Blues Explained CD ROM. For now, enjoy this lesson.

Common patterns or fret board positions to stick with for open tunings like this one.

The thing to remember with open tunings is that all the notes in a row on a given fret form a chord. In the case of an open Major tuning they form a Major chord of course.

What this means is that really any fret will work for you, BUT we are talking blues here and there are some set patterns that need to be done for something to sound "Bluesy".

The frets below will work for any open tuning and you can mix these up however you like.

We are talking about playing it safe here so I'm not going out on a limb and adding in anything too fancy per say. Just the basic safe frets areas to work with. Remember you can mix these notes up in any order you like to create phrasing. The example jam I give under the lesson tab is a great example of these fret areas in play and in action.

What you come up with and play is bound only by your own imagination and in the case of the Blues, your mood, as Blues needs to sort of flow from what you feel and everyone feels it differently which is where the different styles of blues come from.

Open tunings are one of those things many of you will like. What I mean is I always talk about learning the notes on your fret board and some of you say, yeah yeah yeah what ever dude. Well the good news here is you really don't need to know what note your on with slide and open tunings, only what fret you are on and what each fret sounds like.

This is not an excuse to not learn the notes on your instrument but it is a way that beginners can sound like pro's right off the top on day 1 of guitar playing.

NOTE: The frets in BOLD are safe and common ones that will always work. The frets in italics are odd balls that you have to be very careful about. If you have a good ear and know what they sound like you'll be able to throw them in, if you don't have a good ear they can go horribly wrong. LOL See video lesson for an explanation of what I mean.

D__12___11__10__9___7___5___3__2__1__0____________________
A__12___11__10__9___7___5___3__2__1__0____________________
F#_12___11__10__9___7___5___3__2__1__0____________________
D__12___11__10__9___7___5___3__2__1__0____________________
A__12___11__10__9___7___5___3__2__1__0____________________
D__12___11__10__9___7___5___3__2__1__0____________________

Ok, this is first line is a small slightly embellished section of the Crossroads duel. The second line is an embellishment I did on what they did. It's just a jam, nothing more nothing less. It's fairly free time and really needs to be done to feel. If you are counting this while you're playing it, stop. Do not count it, just let it flow along. Now that doesn't mean you can't count to keep tempo. That's fine but don't worry about what are 8th notes or what are 16th notes or where the rests are. etc. that's not what this type of playing is about. Blues is a lot like V.H.. There are no rules per say. It's more about what feels good and what sounds good than it's about what is theoretically correct in music or what you should or shouldn't do etc.

In fact I'll go as far as to say that if you say the word rest or 8th note to a lot of the guys that play this type of music as their profession they will look at you and say, "8th what?" "a rest?" What the F**! are you talking about? lol

D_______________________________________________________________________________
A______________________12_______________________________________________________
F#______12_11_12_11_12____12--10_10--12_11_12---10_________________________________
D_5---12__________________________________ 12---10_ 12---10__________________________
A_______________________________________________12---10__________________________
D_______________________________________________________________________________

D______________________________________0___________________________
A_______________0______________________0___________________________
F#_________________________________________________________________
D____________________3--5_0x_3--5____________0_0_____________________
A____________________3_______________0______________________________
D__0_0__x_x__________________________0______________________________

D_________________________________________________
A__________5~_____________________________________
F#_______5________________________________________
D___3---5________5---3--2-0__2--3_0____________________
A________________________2--3_0__2--3__0____________
D_______________________________2--3__0____________

D______________________________________________________________________
A______________________________________________________________________
F#_____________________________________________________________________
D______________________________________________________________________
A_0_0_____0_0_____0_0_______________________2--3~_--sl dwn--________________
D_0_0_x_x_0_0_x_x_0_0_x_x__etc etc etc.___x_x__ 2--3~_--sl dwn--___0_let ring_____

D______________________________________________
A_______________________________________________
F#__ 10----12~~____________________________________
D___10----12~~~___________________________________
A_______________________________________________
D_______________________________________________

D__10---12__10---12~~----sl dwn---____11---12----10~______________________________________
A__10---12__10---12~~----sl dwn---____11---12----10~___12--11______________________________
F#________________________________________________11--12________________________
D_______________________________________________________11--12~~~_---sl dwn---_______
A______________________________________________________________________________
D______________________________________________________________________________

(should be noted this is not the riff from Could this be magic. That riff is in E and is done with a standard tuning and varies slightly from what is tabbed below as far as note sequence.)

D______________________________________________________________________
A________________________12_____________12_____________________________
F#________11_12--11_11--12____12--11_11--12____12__________________________
D__7-----12_________________________________________10--12~---sl up---24~______
A__________________________________________________________________0_0_
D__________________________________________________________________0_0_