Sad Song: An Original Blues In E Minor

I wrote this piece in E minor as an easy to play beginner blues. The notes of the melody are not difficult as they are the notes from the E minor pentatonic scale with an added blues note which is A # / Bb:

How to play the E minor blues scale on a 3-string Cigar Box Guitar tuned to G D G

Chords Used In The Backing Track

I’ve used 3 chords: Em, Am and Bm, but if you find minor chords difficult to play you could just play them as power chords:

Minor chords related to E minor on Cigar Box Guitar in G D G

I find that the easiest way to play minor chords on the Cigar Box Guitar is to play the 1-finger barre power chords and to add my little finger 3 frets above on the top string.

Learning The Melody

The Notes

Apart from 1 stretch up to the 4the fret, the notes for this melody are all open strings, 2nd fret or 3rd fret. This makes the notes fairly easy to play. You could practice the E minor blues scale from the top of the page as a warm-up if you like.

The Timing Of The Notes

Writing out syncopated pieces is always tricky because the manuscript and TAB can end up looking a bit messy so I’ve kept it is clean-looking as possible but these are just a guide.

If a note has a tied note just before it, this means the note is played just before the beat as in the 4th note of the first bar:

If you’re having trouble working out how to play the rhythm, you’ll probably find my YouTube lesson helpful. It will be live on December 16th, just search beginnercbg on YouTube or follow the link below: