Learn to play three fun and easy open string legato licks with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D. Open string licks always sound killer and the legato makes them easy to play fast. Be sure to get the free tabs to go along with the video instruction and you will be rockin’ these licks tonight!
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I want to show you how to play three fun and easy open string licks.
So right now, Guitar Control is giving away this really awesome daily practice routine to improve your lead guitar chops. This was put together by our very own Silvio Gazquez, a two-time Guitar Idle finalist. This routine covers the four main concepts that are necessary for lead guitar; alternate picking, legato, sweep picking and tapping. All the tabs and exercises are all included in this free ebook and there’s a link in the description where you can get yours.
So let’s get close up and take a look at these.
Legato Lick-1
All right, so the first one here this is actually a riff from Mr Big’s song Addicted To That Rush. So it’s pretty simple to play and whether you play it slow or fast it still sounds cool and this is one that’s nice because if you’re a beginner and you and you have to play it slowly it still sounds really good. So we start off we have a half note rest, we rest on the first two beats and then the downbeat of three and then on the and of three we play the open A string and hammer-on the third fret for the downbeat of four and then we pull back off to the open string for the and of four; so it’s like one, two, three and, four and.
All right and then starting on our second measure you can see it’s the beginning of a repeat. So how I do this is I use my middle finger to do that first part because then the next thing is we’re going to go to the second fret of the G string and I’m going to use my first finger and I’m going to pick that and pull-off to the open string. Then I’m going to come up here to the fourth fret of the D string and I’m using my third finger sometimes I’ll use my second finger, but generally I’ll use my third finger and we pick that and slide up a half step to the fifth fret and then we follow that with the open G string… Then we just repeat that for slide to the open string and then on the third measure we do that again and then we do the slide one more time and then open A string, hammer to the third fret, pull back off and then the whole thing we just repeat… So when you’re practicing this one of the things that you want to really try to work with is to mute the other strings because if you if you just have it… you have all that racket. So I’m muting the lower strings with my palm of my hand here and I’m we’re just kind of picking here in the middle so I’m using this part of my hand to kind of get the higher strings and then letting my fingers kind of droop over here.
Legato Lick-2
All right, so the next we’re going to look at is another pretty easy one. So we’re going to start off with the open B string and we’re going to do a hammer- on to the third fret and I use my second finger here and I’ll explain why in a minute; you could use your first finger, but I honestly feel that it’s going to be easier if you use your second. So we’re going to pick that, hammer and then follow that with the open high E string; so that’s a triplet. Then starting on the downbeat of two we go back to the third fret of the B string and we’re going to pick that and pull to the open string and then we’re going to do the same thing on the high E string; so that’s kind of the whole phrase and then that just repeats… So again we want to mute these lower strings we’re not playing, so just the palm of my hand is taking care of that… All right, so it does that a few times and then the last time at the very last beat of the second measure of this you have the four yell-ow and then starting on the third measure we’re going to go to the third fret of the G string and slide that down pull-off to the second fret of the D string. Then we’re going to go to the low E string open, to the third fret slide to the fourth fret and then we’re going to go back to the second fret of the D string and finally ending with the open low E string… So this is the reason why I say I use my second finger because you could… but for me it just feels more natural to use my second finger, but first you probably just want to break it down and just play just the… just that much of it and then just practice that… Then you add that other part on you break that down into…
Legato Lick-3
All right and then finally the last one this is this, I don’t know if this is exactly the same thing, but it’s very similar to a thing that Slash does at the end of the song My Michelle.
So this one’s pretty simple and to start off you’re going to put your first finger on the second fret of the G string and then your third finger onto the fourth fret and we’re going to do the same shape across the G, D and A string. So we’re going to start we’re going to pick four pull the two and then pull to open string, it’s like that’s a triplet… so that’s beat one. And then for beat two we’re just going to move down to the D string and do the same thing… so that’s beats one and two. And then beats three and four are the same as one and two so we just go back and forth between the G and the D string… So that’s the first measure… Starting on the second measure we go back to the G string again and then the D string and then the A string and then we end just on an A chord… So that one’s pretty easy to play fast once you get there. I mean if your brand, brand new to pull-offs… then it might take some work. So that being said where you’re doing this pull-off here you want to be careful that you don’t that you don’t bend the string… you don’t want to get that where you’re pulling on the string. So what happens when you go to pull-off here you end up bending the string here. So if this is a new technique, just hold that finger down extra tight… then you’ll get to where you know you’ll have the feel for it you won’t have pulled it down so hard, but at first that really helps.
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, three fun not too terribly difficult open string licks. So if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
