In this instructional video, vintage blues guitarist Scott Perry teaches a B‑minor blues progression modeled after B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone,” using Freddie Green three‑note chord voicings. He outlines the I‑IV‑V progression with specific 3‑note grips: B‑minor (7‑7‑7), E‑minor‑7 (7‑5‑7), and F#7 (9‑8‑9), and shows an alternative higher‑fret position for electric guitar. Perry emphasizes a lazy back‑beat groove that accents beats 2 and 4, demonstrating the counting pattern (1‑2‑3‑4, 2‑2‑3‑4, etc.). He suggests a funkier rhythmic feel, explains how to slide two notes of the shape for a jazzy effect, and introduces a G‑augmented turnaround shape used before the IV chord in “The Thrill Is Gone.” The lesson combines chord theory, positional alternatives, rhythmic feel, and embellishment techniques for playing minor blues on guitar.
Chapters
Hey gang, Scott Perry here, vintage blues guitarist and the creator of guidedguitarlessons.com. In this lesson, I'm going to show you the typical changes for a minor blues in the blues tradition, and we're going to need to go back and grab one of the voicings that we learned during— in the dominant section of this course. So we're going to be in the key of B minor. We're going to be playing changes very similar to B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone," will be in the key of B minor. So here's my B minor shape, a 7-7-7 grip. That's my I chord, and I'll be playing that for the first 4 measures of the tune. The second grip is my IV chord, which is an E minor 7 grip, a 7-5-7 grip. I'll play that for measures 5 and 6. Then I'm back to B minor for measures 7 and 8. Now, in a blues, the V chord is normally going to be a dominant chord. And so we're going to grab this 9-8-9 dominant grip, an F#7, and that's going to be our V chord, which we'll play for measures 9 and 10. And then we're back to the B minor for measures 11 and 12. In another position— on an acoustic it's a little tough but doable— we have a 14-12-14 grip as our I chord. The E minor is a 12-12-12 grip, and the V chord, the F#7, is a 14-14-15 grip. I'm not going to play in this position because it's just a little bit too, too difficult on the acoustic guitar, but if you're an electric guitar player, you're certainly welcome to, to try it in that position. The groove that we'll use as we play through these changes is going to be very similar to the one that we just used. We're just going to play in a way that kind of accents the backbeat, the 2 and the 4 of each measure, and that's going to provide that nice kind of lazy bluesy backbeat sound. So it'll be something like 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4. Very similar to that boom-chuck that we just did. Boom-chuck, boom-chuck.
So through the changes with that particular rhythm, it sounds like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 3, 4, 6, 2, 3, 4, 7, 2, 4, 8, 2, 3, 4, 9, 2, 3, 4, 10, 2, 3, 4, 11, 2, 3, 4, 12, 2, 3, 4.
We could make it a little bit more funky, again similar to what we did in the last lesson.
1, 2, 3, and 4. 1, 2, 3, and 4.
One, well, two more things. When I'm playing this shape, it's really easy to take this, these two notes and slide it up to get a kind of a jazzy sound.
So that count would be kind of 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1.
Doesn't work as well on this grip, but when I'm back here— and then I'm gonna just add in here that When people typically play the changes to "The Thrill Is Gone," they'll— before they go to the 5 chord, they'll play this shape here, and this is kind of like a G augmented chord. What I'm doing is I'm fretting the 5th string at the 10th fret with my 3rd finger, the 4th string at the 9th fret with my 2nd finger, and then I'm fretting on the 3rd and 2nd string at the 7th fret with my 1st finger in a little mini bar So in the context, I'll just go ahead and put that into this last run through the progression.
