Spice Up Your Playing with Eight Fancy Blues Chords

Blues guitar is timeless, and some of its most basic chords just sound... right. However, there are chords out there that stray away from the traditional blues sound, and you'll be surprised to know that these chords may actually feel better than their simpler counterparts.

An understanding of intervals will take you a long way in experimenting with different tonalities and forming opinions about how your favorite colors of the palate work best in a given situation. The interesting thing about blues music is that it’s primarily constructed in an ambiguous tonality, given that the pentatonic scales–major or minor–each only contain five notes.

While the blues is typically a very well-defined genre that is instantly identifiable, throwing in these interesting resolution chords at the end of your phrases can completely change the melodic context.

If you want a full understanding of how these chords are constructed and why they work, as well as access to learn even more chords and utilize them in your guitar playing, make sure to sign up for my course, Guitar Super System.

Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric brand Music is Win. His insightful, uncomplicated guitar lessons and gear demonstrations along with entertaining, satirical content about life as a musician receive tens of millions of video views per month across social media. Tyler is also the creator of the extremely popular online guitar learning platform, Guitar Super System. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tyler has been teaching guitar for over a decade and operates a production studio in Nashville, TN.