Lesson 30 - Blues Box 4 - The Clapton Box

March 9th, 2008

This is another in the series of lessons called "The 5 Essential Blues Boxes for Guitar". This lesson covers Box 4, which I have named "The Clapton Box". Don’t read into the name too much, I only call it that because there’s a riff in this box that I heard Clapton play a couple times. Stevie didn’t play in this box much, but I wanted to teach it anyway because it’s useful to know something you can do at this position on the fretboard.

Equipment Details for this lesson

Full Length Lesson Details

The extended 20 minute lesson from the Lesson Download Store is offered in near-HD quality, and in addition to what’s shown in the free lesson, I also show you how to play a couple of riffs in this blues box.  Watch the end of the free version to see the riffs I teach in the extended version.

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3 Comments

  1. coachjcoach Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Ignore the “Steve” above brain fart!

    [Reply]

  2. coach Says:
    March 13th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    Steve I guess I don’t understand what the boxes are.

    How do they relate to, say the different patterns of the minor pent scale?

    [Reply]

    Anthony Stauffer ( StevieSnacks Teacher ) reply on March 13th, 2008:

    Hi Coach,

    My name is actually Anthony (Stevie is for Stevie Ray Vaughan).

    This series started on Lesson 25, and Lesson 26 was a followup explaining more about what these boxes are and how they relate to other methods of teaching. Check out the comments here, as well as the comment threads on the YouTube videos as well. My YouTube page is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/gr8bluesgtr

    But to answer your question briefly, these blues boxes are a set of shapes that connect together in the same order in any key, and each shape forms the boundary of a position on the fretboard where certain types of blues licks are played. The only thing they have in common with scales is the licks played inside of them often use parts of a scale, but the boxes themselves are not scales and should not be compared to or tried to mesh with scales.

    Hope that makes sense :)

    [Reply]