Blues Guitar Aid

myminifactory

In my fifth grade elementary school, our music workshop allowed us to explore various instruments. Some instruments proved extremely frustrating because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make a sound. However, one teacher quickly taught me how to play a song on the violin right away. The exhilarating feeling of creating meaningful music started me on my path towards both music and engineering. Today, I play jazz saxophone and am finishing a degree in Materials Science and Engineering. Since music education is becoming increasingly scarce, this project aims to excite first-time guitarists about jazz by enabling them to play a blues the moment they pick up a guitar. The "Blues Guitar Aid" is a plastic piece that clips onto the end of a guitar and allows the guitarist to easily form the chords of a 12-bar blues in A. By pressing down on a plastic piece, the pads contact the guitar strings in the proper places to create each chord. A demonstration of the device can be viewed here. Once musicians successfully play their first blues, they can use the device to visualize where their fingers should be placed to create the chords on their own. Why the blues? The 12-bar blues is one of the first truly American forms of music and serves as a gateway to learning many amazing songs. It's simple to start with and has numerous variations of increasing complexity. The most basic form of the 12-bar blues plays the following chords: I7 | I7 | I7 | I7 | IV7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | V7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | The "I" indicates that the chord is built from the root or base note of an 8-note major scale ("do" of "do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do"). The IV indicates that the chord is built from the fourth note of the scale ("fa"), and the "V" indicates that the chord is built from the fifth note of the major scale ("so"). The "7" signifies a dominant chord with a flat seventh. Additional information on the blues and dominant chords can be found here. In the key of A, the 12-bar blues follows this pattern: A7 | A7 | A7 | A7 | D7 | D7 | A7 | A7 | E7 | D7 | A7 | A7 | I printed this device with just 15 grams of PLA for a total cost of approximately $0.35. In addition to this device, there is a commercialized plastic device that helps teach the country/pop/rock chords of G, em, C, and D. This device can be found commercially here for $24.99. I hope you enjoy learning the blues on guitar, and I welcome any feedback or improvements you may think of!