Hey guys! Gaby Soule with Guitar Control, today we’re going to take a look at guitar licks and some things that are good to keep in mind when you’re studying them.
A guitar lick is always made out of a scale or a combination of scales. The cool thing about them is that they use to sound interesting and musical, so you don’t get the mechanical feel that you’ll normally find on a regular exercise or sequence.
Anyway, your playing will need both things, the expressive and creative aspect you´ll get from solos, riffs and licks, and the technical side that you will find in different combinations of scales and arpeggios.
Good guitar licks pdf show exactly what the original player does in terms of melody, rhythm and expression. Concentrate on the technical facts first. After finding the notes on the fret board try to think of things like the fingering and the picking pattern, after that it’ll be time to focus on other items like bends, vibrato and all the things that have to do with expression.
Check out this VIDEO GUITAR LESSON ON A SRV LICK
It is important to control how much pressure you make with your fingers (see Sample 1). Sometimes we tend to press too much when we want to play something that is hard and fast at the same time. Having control over this item will give us a more fluid sound. It will only take to relax our hands a little bit while we repeat slowly. We don’t need to force speed, because it comes as a result of all the times we have repeated the lick correctly. Focusing on the expressive aspects and on the technical accuracy is all you have to do. The metronome will later help to reach the desired speed.
Try to learn licks from many different players and styles so your guitar vocabulary will grow faster and stronger, and you’ll develop a wider range of musical tools to make you playing more brilliant and interesting.
Keep on playing! See you soon!
Gaby
P.S. If playing lead guitar is your goal, I recommend you to check out our: