Now I’ve learnt how to play a 12 bar blues along with the bendy record, and hopefully figured out how to tune up along the way, it is over the page and onto “Basics” (pp. 12-14).

This book uses tab for the rest of the way through and that is the main basic it introduces here. It says “Playing tablature is an old and honorable tradition. Even as far back as the 15th century, organ music was commonly notated in tablature. In the 16th century, almost all lute music was scored in tablature. The immense popularity of tablature in the past can be accorded to one primary reason: that reading music from tablature is easy.” I’m not sure organ tab is that easy to read (see Wikipedia’s example!) but it is a compact way to show where to put your fingers and I can see the value as a starting point. I’m glad though that I quickly got involved in additional musical activities that meant I had to begin to pickup standard notation as well. I count not even mentioning regular dots as a mark against this book.

Over the page, we have the 12 bar blues from the first section written out again in tablature. That is a neat move because it takes something already familiar and uses it to step towards the next section, which will be introducing us to riffs. It also encourages the player to “keep your eyes on the page, not on your right hand” (we’re still just on open strings at this point). I’d say that is a good habit to cultivate early on.

However, there is one more questionable statement to come: “Although the length of the blues progression varied originally from 8 to 16 bars, it has become fixed by today’s rock players at 12 bars.” Really? Perhaps they’d never heard Clapton’s take on “Key to the Highway” (eight bars, released in 1970) or numerous other examples? Better perhaps to say “if someone suggests jamming on a blues, they probably mean one of a small number of variations on a 12 bar pattern unless they say otherwise”. Fortunately, I soon started playing with my Dad, who had a wide knowledge of traditional blues styles and who would have me following patterns that might last from anywhere from 7.5 to 18 or more bars long, with a reliance on listening and following the song!

Gripes aside, we can now not only play a simple blues in A but also write it down in a fashion which is good enough for our present needs as a beginner so, with a bit more practise under our belt, we can prepare to move on.