A little blues lesson...

To begin, we should discuss what the blues is, in basic terms. Generally speaking (that will be the case for the majority of this article) the blues is based upon a I - IV - V (or V7) chord progression - that is, the tonic of the chord (the I chord), the sub-dominant (IV) and dominant (V) or dominant seventh (V7) (NB: these figures of I - IV - V translate to 1 - 4 - 5). In practice, this translates to an E - A - B(7) progression (in E major), A - D - E(7) (A major) and so on.

OK, so now we know the basic theory of the chord structure. We now need to use these chords to form the progression. The most common form of progression that can be found is a 12 Bar Blues. This occurs in so much music, right back to early blues, rock, even jazz. Anyway...we can break these 12 bars down, and place the chords into it, as follows (use open chords to begin with): 4 bars of E, 2 bars of A, 2 bars of E, 1 bar of B, 1 bar of A and back to E.

Fingerings:
Low to High E: 022100 A: x02220 B: x24442 B7: 021202

This little blues lesson coutesy of:
http://unplugged.virtualave.net

And the newsletter of The Acoustic Guitar Workshop - home of acoustic blues tuition online:
http://www.acousticguitarworkshop.com