The lead licks are all in the key of E minor and are played in the open position. This is also a call-and-response style idea. The trickiest thing here is going between the lead lines and the chord riff that happens between each lick. This track from John Lee Hooker is a blues standard that everyone should learn, but it has its challenges. First finger bends inside a lick may feel strange at first, but it gives you an instant BB sound. This is one of the most common BB King guitar style characteristics. BB King leaves a lot of space in his playing for the notes to breathe.Ī lot of this lick takes place inside the second position of the scale and uses a lot of quarter tone bends on the index finger. When playing in the BB King style you need to show a lot of restraint and not give in to the urge to fill in every gap with notes. This uses the first and second positions of the B Minor Pentatonic scale. BB can say more with fewer notes than most people can with hundreds of notes. One thing anyone will tell you about BB King is that he really doesn’t need a lot of notes to work well. This lick is the opening lick from the first guitar solo of the track The Thrill is Gone. No list of great blues licks could exist without a featuring of BB King. If you hang on them too long, it makes the flat note more apparent. While this technically introduces notes that are flat for the key, when played at speed create a more vocal like style of phrasing.Īll the under bent notes are not hung on for too long which is an important detail in how to make them work. You’ll notice that a lot of the bends played in this solo aren’t full step bends, there is a lot of under bending here. This lick features a lot of bends and some slippery runs between the first and second shapes of the D minor pentatonic scale. The lick to learn here is this phrase from the point the solo changes feel from the verse groove to the chorus. This is a solo worth learning in it’s entirety as it really showcases everything we loved about Eric Clapton in that specific time period. This Eric Clapton guitar solo is jam packed full of great licks and it’s quite hard to single out one lick in this solo. This technique can be applied with any modal scale where new intervals can be added to introduce new feelings to the music. The 2 and b6 intervals from the natural minor scale are not notes often employed inside more traditional blues playing.Īdding these notes that are “outside” of the minor pentatonic is a great way to add some new flavours to your playing. This lick is in the key of C minor, but Page also introduces some notes from the A natural minor scale and even lands on and focuses on those notes at specific points. The lick in question here is the intro lick which has also become one of Page’s most iconic guitar moments. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page is known for his aggressive, sloppy blues runs but this track of the bands third album, Led Zeppelin III, shows a more tender side to his playing. Led Zeppelin – Since I’ve Been Loving You This lick could also be considered a turnaround lick that you would play over bars 11 and 12 of your blues progression to turn the pattern back around the first chord.ģ. Licks like this are useful to know if you’re writing your own music, or looking to introduce a blues track with just the lead guitar. The track only officially starts when the full band come in with the main riff, everything prior to that is just Buddy Guy starting the song on his own. The front end of the lick is a free-time setup phrase that happens before the track starts. The lick is very spread out with plenty of sustained notes. This Buddy Guy lick is an A minor pentatonic lick that shows you don’t need a lot of notes to create great music. Buddy Guy – Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues This lick goes between open string minor and major pentatonic licks and a series of 12 bar blues shuffle patterns which start on the “a” of the beatĢ. One instrument plays to ask a question and the other instruments answer the question with their phrase. You can think of this as a question-and-answer idea, a popular form to use in blues music. This Freddie King track features a call and response pattern between lead guitar licks and some chordal work. This iconic track has been covered by many artists, most notably John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers featuring a young, fresh-faced Eric Clapton on guitar.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |