John Mayer Teaches Guitarists How to Play the Blues in a 45-Minute Masterclass

Play­ing the blues is easy, many a bud­ding gui­tarist thinks—their star­ry eyes fixed on the math­i­est, prog­gi­est, djent-iest (or what­ev­er) gui­tar pyrotech­nics of their favorite 7- or 8‑string slinger. Learn a minor pen­ta­ton­ic blues scale, a few barre chords, some sexy bends, a 12-bar pro­gres­sion and you’re off, right? Why spend time try­ing to play like Albert King (Jimi Hendrix’s idol) or Bud­dy Guy when you’re reach­ing for the ulti­mate sweep-pick­ing tech­nique, or what­ev­er, in the com­pet­i­tive games­man­ship of gui­tar hero­ics?

I’ve encoun­tered this kind of think­ing among gui­tar play­ers quite often and find it baf­fling giv­en the blues essen­tial place in rock and roll, met­al included—and giv­en how much more there is to play­ing blues than the stereo­typ­i­cal for­mu­las to which the music gets reduced. Black Sab­bath start­ed as a blues band, Led Zep­pelin nev­er stopped being one, and it was Robert John­son who turned the dev­il into rock­’s brood­ing, Byron­ic hero.

The cross­roads sto­ry has been told in hind­sight as a metaphor for John­son’s trou­bled, curs­ed­ly short life. But at the time, it was about envy on the part of his fel­low blues­men, who couldn’t believe how good he’d got­ten in seem­ing­ly no time. Want to emerge from quar­an­tine and inspire sim­i­lar envy? The dev­il isn’t offer­ing online lessons, but you can learn the blues from con­tem­po­rary leg­end, John May­er, who post­ed the les­son above on his Insta­gram Live a few days back.

As with all such online lessons, every­one will respond dif­fer­ent­ly to the teacher’s style. The for­mat does not allow for Q&A, obvi­ous­ly, but you can pause and rewind indef­i­nite­ly. May­er doesn’t move too quick­ly; if you’re an inter­me­di­ate play­er with a grasp on the basics, it won’t be too hard to keep up. He comes across as easy­go­ing and hum­ble (not a qual­i­ty he’s always been known for), and explains con­cepts clear­ly, relat­ing them back to the fret­board each time.

As always, one will get out of the les­son what they put into it. Maybe no one will accuse you of con­spir­ing with the evil one when you’ve mas­tered some of these tech­niques and incor­po­rat­ed them into your own play­ing. But you won’t have to lie, exact­ly, if you tell peo­ple you’ve been jam­ming with John May­er. Or, if that’s not cool in your cir­cles, come up with your own legend—abduction by a con­spir­a­cy of blues-play­ing aliens, per­haps.

How­ev­er you explain it to your friends when we get out of the wood­shed, I have no doubt that becom­ing a bet­ter blues play­er can improve what­ev­er else you plan to do with the gui­tar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn to Play Gui­tar for Free: Intro Cours­es Take You From The Very Basics to Play­ing Songs In No Time

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness