Texas Rock

In this lesson, Charlie presents a little 12-bar Blues pattern combining a riff and a chord rhythm called Texas Rock.

The diagrams below show the position of the fingers on your left hand to play the basic chords used in this lesson.

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Here is a little 12-bar Blues pattern combining a riff and a chord rhythm and it's called Texas Rock, so let's start off by looking at the chord shapes involved.

All right, we're starting up here with our E7 chord. It's a normal E chord, I've just got my little finger down here on a D note, which is my 7th which I'm placing on top of the chord ...

The second inversion is an A7 chord. I'm half barring from the D string down and putting my second finger on a G note, which is again my 7th, and that is on top of the chord once again, so I get, strumming from the A string down ...

E7 ... A7 ... and our standard B7 chord in first position ...

Ok, we're going to take a little look at the rythmic pattern that I'm using for this progression. So, we'll take a look at the right hand.

I start off by hitting my E open, following through with the chord ... one ... two ... three-and ..., so it is a down-up stroke on the three-and ... one ... two ... three-and ... and I just sort of whiz by my next beat, which is my forth beat not hitting the strings. I get a kind of miss completely. I get a one ... two ... three-and ... missing, and I'm going to grab my up-stroke playing the 'and' of the four count, so I get
one ... two ... three-and (four)-and,
one ... two ... three-and (four)-and,
one ... two ... three-and (four)-and,
one ... two ... three-and (four)-and

that's pretty much the rhythmic pattern for the whole blues ...

Now we're going to take a look at the riff that we're about to play through the 12-bar blues pattern. The only thing that changes with the chord changes is the actual base note and I'll take you through that.

So, over the E chord, I play an open E ... G ... A ... B ... open D ... and then finish on my E on the octave ...

And to start that off, when I count the piece in, it's one, two, three, four, ONE ... we're actually counting in on the second beat of our bar. We're starting off on the second beat of the bar. One, two, three, four, ONE, two-and, three-and, four-and ..., which brings me into my rhythm on the E chord. One, two, three, four, ONE, ...

Exactly the same thing when I go into the A7 chord, the only difference is that I play an A base, open A string instead of my E on the last note ... here's that open A ...

And finally, going into my B7 chord, exactly the same deal except I play this B note as my bass, second finger on the A string second fret, which of course is exactly where it is when I'm playing the B7 chord ... difference being here is on the last stroke, which is the up-stroke, I quickly change to an A7 chord, and I'm not going to use that A7, the one that I've been using through the whole piece, I'm going to use this version of the A7 with my second finger on the D string second fret and my third finger down here on the C# which is on the B string second fret ... so I'm getting from the B7 ... and then finishing off ... with my E chord.

So I'm predominantly playing alternate picking. With my right hand I'm using alternate picking when I play the riff, starting off with the E ... etc...

One other thing to notice is a slight change in the riff when I'm going to the B chord. Instead of playing the riff as we did on the E and the A, we're going to add a couple of little different notes to get us into that B7 shape. So I'll take you thought that now.

So, when I'go into my B7 chord, my notes are open E... G... A... A#... D... and open D to finish, hitting my B bass, there is that quick change on the A7.

So, I'll just take you through the entire pattern, trying to show you both right and left hands.

One, two, three, four, one ...

This little blues pattern is not all that difficult. The important thing to remember is that you can maintain a nice even tempo coming out of the riff into the chord changes and maintain a nice even rhythm. Just play it slow at first and make sure it is nice and continuous and even and make sure you feel comfortable when you're playing through those changes. Good luck with it. Have a lot of fun. I'll catch you next time.

Copyright © C. Pennell & J. Marco (cpguitar.com)