
A few simple chords is all it takes.
Beginner
Beginner
- Learn to play a 12-bar blues, in three different keys, using one shape.
- Study an assortment of strumming and picking patterns.
- Gain a basic understanding of the 12-bar blues form.
As usual, there is more to this lesson than the title implies. We will be working with one chord shape at a time, but over the course of the lesson we’ll study three different shapes. The final example in this lesson incorporates all three shapes to demonstrate how a few basic ideas can provide us with infinite possibilities.
It is important to know that for every chord name in this lesson there are countless shapes—also known as fingerings or voicings—available. For this lesson, I chose what I consider to be the most practical and flexible shapes.
The A7 Shape
A relatively straightforward shape, the A7 form only requires two fingers, and if you can manage to keep the open 5th string ringing and get the G on the 1st string to sound, the rest will eventually make itself heard.
Like all of the examples in this lesson, Ex. 1 is a 12-bar blues using the I, IV, and V chords with a “quick change.” That means we’ll be moving to the IV chord in measure two rather than staying on the I chord for four measures. Both the quick change and non-quick change forms are commonplace in the blues repertoire. Additionally, all examples will move the chord shape(s) up and down the guitar neck, allowing us to play through the entire progression. The real fun begins with modifications you can generate using right-hand rhythmic patterns.
For Ex. 1, merely finger the A7 shape, strum the basic rhythmic pattern, then move the shape from the 2nd fret (think of the barre in this shape as your fret point of reference) up to the 7th fret. Wondrously, the A7 shape now sounds a D7 chord! That’s because even though the shape hasn’t changed, the fretboard position has. A static shape with lots of movement—that’s the secret. To complete the 12-bar blues form, simply move the A7 shape up to the 9th fret for the E7 chord.
Things start to get interesting in Ex. 2, and yes, we do modify the shape ever so slightly. First let’s address the right-hand pattern. You can play this figure using your fingers or a pick (I used my fingers in the audio) as you alternate between the open 5th string and the chord. Meanwhile, your left hand has some work to do as well. You’ll be lifting off your third finger between each A7 chord to allow the 2nd fret notes to ring (with the barre), which creates an A6 chord. This A7–A6 relationship is lifeblood to the blues. This pattern may be noticeably harder for some beginners. If so, don’t concern yourself with moving to the other positions, just work on the A7-A6 movement. Once that is manageable, the shifting shouldn’t cause you too much distress.
Note: When you move to the D7 chord at the 7th fret, you should play the 4th string open for the bass note. Likewise, when playing the E7 at the 9th, play the 6th string open.
The E7 Shape
Ex. 3 continues our theme with the E7 shape. This might be more challenging than the A7 shape, but stick with it—it’s an essential grip. As with the previous example, this one focuses on the right hand for variety. But unlike the previous examples, I used a flatpick when recording this track. Don’t fixate on getting every single note right, but be loose and aim for the essence of the chord. Missing a note or two isn’t a big deal. Only on the B7 shape does accidently hitting the 1st string imply some non-blues color you might want to avoid … maybe not. I kept a fluid down-up strumming pattern throughout this example, but once you have the basics down, feel free to mix it up.
Ex. 4 stays with the same E7 shape, although now we will be very specific with our right hand. This is a common fingerpicking pattern, with the thumb handling the 6th, 5th, and 4th strings, and the fingers picking the rest. At first, focus more on the picking pattern than the chord movement, as it’s the fingerpicking that’s vital to this style of playing. Note that you do not play the open 1st string on the B7 chord, otherwise the pattern is uniform throughout.
The D7 Shape
You could argue I should have started this lesson with the D7 shape, as it is probably the easiest shape to play. Consider my saving it for last as a reward for making it this far! In Ex. 5, I’ve gone electric and added bass and drums to demonstrate how these shapes work in any context.
Ex. 5 is two choruses of a 12-bar. The first sticks with our unwavering right-hand picking pattern and left-hand movement up and down the neck. The second proves that, with rhythmic variation, one can create boundless combinations when playing with simple shapes.
All Three Shapes
Finally, Ex. 6 incorporates all three shapes into two choruses of a 12-bar blues. The first chorus applies the shapes in their most basic forms, the second chorus displays more functionality and complexity.
I hope this lesson has shown you that the modesty of basic chord shapes and the predictability of a chord progression are not a measure of aptitude. A better gauge of proficiency? The capability to imagine and create incalculable variations from a small number of rudimentary concepts.
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
Recorded live at the Sydney Opera House, the Australian guitarist’s new album reminds listeners that his fingerpicking is in a stratum all its own. His approach to arranging only amplifies that distinction—and his devotion to Chet Atkins.
Australian fingerpicking virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel is turning 70 this year. He’s been performing since he was 6, and for every solo show he’s played, he’s never used a setlist.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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