Acoustic Blues Phrasebook

Create Your Signature Vocabulary for Expressive Acoustic Blues Guitar

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Rob Swift

Educator

blues, blues-rock, rock

Genres

About this course

A lot of blues players collect licks over time, but when it’s time to put together a full performance, those ideas don’t always connect in a musical way. The key is knowing where phrases fit, how they move with the changes, and how to flow from one idea to the next with feel and intention.

In Acoustic Blues Phrasebook, Rob Swift gives you a practical, musical framework for building your own solo acoustic blues language. Centered around 25 mix-and-match licks mapped to the essential movements of a 12-bar blues, you’ll learn how to play through the form with more confidence, direction, and flow.

“What if you had a go-to set of licks and rhythms to build your own acoustic blues performances? In this course, that’s exactly what you’re gonna get,” says Rob.

You’ll explore:
• 25 mix-and-match licks built around the key movements of a 12-bar blues
• How to phrase with confidence and musical intent
• Turnaround vocabulary to wrap up your choruses cleanly
• Variations on classic shuffle patterns
• Essential soloing positions for acoustic blues
• How to connect licks and rhythms into complete arrangements
• Ways to create more fluid, authentic-sounding performances

You’ll also get full access to TrueFire’s learning tools, including synced tab and notation, slo-mo, looping, and more, so you can break everything down and work at your own pace.

Grab your guitar, and let’s play some acoustic blues.

Release date: 05/07/2026 • 1h 41m runtime

intermediate late intermediate acoustic guitar guitar electric guitar technique practice

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Sample lessons

One to Four: Acoustic Blues Lick 6

Demo & Breakdown

One to Four: Acoustic Blues Lick 7

Demo & Breakdown

One to Four: Acoustic Blues Lick 8

Demo & Breakdown

One to Four: Acoustic Blues Lick 6

Demo & Breakdown

One to Four: Acoustic Blues Lick 7

Demo & Breakdown

One to Four: Acoustic Blues Lick 8

Demo & Breakdown

What's included

37 lessons • 29 charts

Acoustic Blues Phrasebook

Hey friends, I’m Rob Swift. What if you had a go-to set of licks and rhythms to build your own acoustic blues performances? In Acoustic Blues Phrase Book, that’s exactly what you’re going to get.

Together, we’ll master a vocabulary of 25 mix-and-match licks, each tailor-fitted to the specific changes of a 12-bar blues. We’ll explore variations on the classic shuffle pattern, essential soloing positions, and versatile chord forms to expand your understanding of the blues language.

To tie it all together, three, four... I’ll show you how you can craft original acoustic blues performances as you learn to connect our go-to licks and rhythms.

So, if you’re ready to discover unlimited creative possibilities, let’s grab your guitar and get started.

Applied Practice

In this lesson, we’ll be going over how to turn these licks into applied practice. We’ll start by getting the licks into our muscle memory, learning the 12-bar blues form, and getting comfortable switching between rhythm and lead ideas so they become part of our own musical identity.

Basic Blues in E

In this lesson, we’ll be going over the basic 12-bar blues progression in the key of E. We’ll learn how the one, four, and five chords work together, how E7, A7, and B7 function in the form, and how those changes give us the structure we need to start building acoustic blues performances.

Shuffle & Rhythm Feel

In this lesson, we’ll be going over the shuffle feel and some essential rhythm options for acoustic blues. We’ll work with basic, extended, and traveling shuffle patterns, along with swinging eighth-note strums, so we can start blending rhythm and lead ideas into a complete blues groove.

Scale Positions

In this lesson, we’ll be going over the main soloing positions, boxes, and scales we’ll use throughout the course. We’ll connect the E minor blues scale, major pentatonic sounds, BB’s box, chord tones, and CAGED shapes so we can see how each position supports our lead lines across the fretboard.

The I Chord: Solo Blues Licks

In this lesson, we’ll be going over how to jam over the one chord. We’ll set up the first group of five licks and look at how each phrase can be mixed and matched into our acoustic blues vocabulary while staying connected to the E7 sound.

One Chord: Acoustic Blues Lick 1

For this lick, we’ll learn a classic phrase built from the open position E minor blues scale. We’ll use the low E string to imply the chord, add a high-string blues bend, move through a triplet idea, and resolve into an E7 sound with a smooth slide.

+ 30 more lessons