Blues Strums and Muting for Guitar

• Sep 14, 2020 - 18:35

Can someone tell me how to write blues strums for guitar? I'm a little familiar with 12-bar blues, but when I try to write it it just comes out as 1, 2, 3, 4 and I know that it isn't blues. My other problem is I don't know how to insert muting symbols. In fact, I can't find them on the palette.

I have tried looking in the handbook for the solutions, however it wasn't specific enough.

Any help will be appreciated.

Comments

• Sep 14, 2020 - 20:14

It isn't really clear what you mean. That is, I certainly know what "blues" means, and I know what "strum" means, but I can't really say what you might mean by "blues strums". If you mean, you are looking for creative advice on what type of blues patterns might be appropriate for playing a blues tune, that's pretty subjective, and would depend entirely on the specific groove being played in the drums and bass. Also the particular player, and his mood that day. But once you decide on a strum pattern you want to write, we can certainly help you enter it into MuseScore!

As for muting symbols, there are a variety of different symbols used for that, so again, more context would help. A common one is to display the notehead with an "X". On a tab staff, you do that by pressing the "X" key. On a standard staff, you can use the Noteheads palette or the Inspector to change noteheads - many different ones are supported. But there are also a variety of symbols in the Articulations palette that might be relevant for you, also tons and tons in the Symbols palette (press "Z" to display).

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