Stage 4 milestone
Milestone: The Blues Highway
Review, practical challenge and self-assessment to close the stage with everything you learned.
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Stage 4 milestone
Review, practical challenge and self-assessment to close the stage with everything you learned.
Look back down the road: when you started this highway you were playing open chords in straight eighths. Now you have power chords that move all over the neck, you control noise with both hands, write your own riffs, know by heart the most played form in popular music, swing your eighths like a blues player and colour it all with seventh chords. Time to bring everything together in one piece and prove to yourself the trip was worth it.
Each stop of the stage adds a piece to the final challenge:
| Stop | What you learned | Where it shows up in the challenge |
|---|---|---|
| Power chords | Root + fifth, shapes on the 6th and 5th strings | All of the level 1 accompaniment |
| Palm muting | Palm by the saddle, chugging, muting with both hands | The low notes of the boogie, noise-free |
| Riffs | Short phrases, home note, silence | The bar 4 fill in level 3 |
| 12-bar blues | I-IV-V, turnaround, quick change | The form of the whole piece |
| Shuffle and swing | The hidden triplet, the 5-6 boogie | The rhythm of the whole piece |
| Seventh chords | A7, D7, E7, B7; the b7 | The 5-6-b7-6 variant in level 3 and the strummed version |
An original shuffle blues in A, in three levels. Start with whichever level feels comfortable and move up once you can play it twice through without mistakes. All three levels fit the same backing:
One power chord per bar, strummed with the hand moving in triplets and a light palm mute. Focus on just three things: the shape, the swing and landing each change on beat 1.
The 5-5-6-6 pattern through all twelve bars. In bar 12 you play half a boogie on E5 and let the last chord ring: that's the turnaround.
The full version. Three new things:
With the quick change, bar 2 of the backing doesn't match: use this one for level 3.
If one day you don't feel like boogieing, play the same form strumming open seventh chords in E, with B7 in bars 9 and 12:
Two weeks, 20–30 minutes a day. Mixing different exercises in each session (interleaved practice) and revisiting earlier days' material (spaced practice) locks things in better than drilling one thing for an hour.
| Day | Warm-up (5 min) | Main block (10–15 min) | Musical close (5–10 min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Power chords along the neck | Challenge level 1 | Your own riff over E5 |
| 4–6 | Chugging with accents | Level 2: bars 1–4 and 9–12 separately | Blues in E with power chords |
| 7 | Active rest: just listen to blues | ||
| 8–10 | One-minute changes A7–D7 and E7–B7 | Full level 2 with the backing | Strummed version in E |
| 11–13 | From triplet to shuffle | Level 3: bars 3–4 and 10–12 on a loop | Full level 3, slowly |
| 14 | Whatever is hardest for you | Record your best level, twice through | Listen back and note what to improve |
Power chords along the neck with chugging: two muted beats and two open chords.
Goal: Play the exercise twice in a row with no extra strings and a steady palm mute.
Goal: Play your current challenge level twice through with the backing, without stopping and with swing.
Replace the bar 4 riff in level 3 with one of your own. Rules: start and end on A, use notes from the toolbox at the riffs stop and keep the shuffle. Record it.
Goal: Compose your own fill riff for bar 4 and play it inside the piece.
Playing blues without listening to blues is like learning a language without hearing anyone speak it. Over these two weeks, spend a few minutes a day listening closely. A route through this stage's history:
| Historical stop | What to listen to | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson | One guitar acting as bass, rhythm and answer to the voice; sometimes irregular forms | |
| Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed | Repeated low riffs, band shuffle, the 5-6 boogie | |
| Rock and roll | Chuck Berry | High-energy guitar boogie and the 12-bar form |
| British rock of the 60s and 70s | The Rolling Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin | Power-chord riffs and amplified blues |
With each song, try three things: count the bars to see whether it's a 12-bar blues, notice whether the eighths are straight or swung and find the main riff. You don't need to play it: recognising it is enough.
Before you start, listen to these two strumming examples: you'll need them for one of the questions.
Example 1
Example 2
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