Welcome back! Today I wanna give you what I think it is one of the top 3 beginner blues guitar
lessons.
We all know about certain things that make a genre what it is. Disco has its classic octave bass
lines, Funk has those muted guitar sounds, Reggae has that simple guitar sound that almost
feels like anyone can just grab a guitar and perform it. Well today I wanna show you 3 different
guitar licks that I learned when I was just starting out, and that I personally think that are the
most recognizable licks in Blues.
The first lick I wanna show is a line that is often used in turnarounds. This means that in a 12bar blues, you would use this lick in the last 2 bars. I particularly made it in the key of A, which means that a common turnaround for this key would be an A7 followed by a E7 on the next bar. Let check it out:
You can play it with your fingers or with a pick. Classic players will often use a hybrid picking
technique in which they will combine using a pick and the fingers.
The next lick I’m gonna show sounds really great over a Shuffle Blues. I would personally use
this lick on the weak bars (2nd bar, 4th bar, 6th bar, 8th bar, 10th and 12th bar). It just sounds to
me like the first bar of this lick is trying to resolve. Anyway, let’s check it out:
This chop is definitively all downstrokes. You can try alternate picking but they will never bring
the emotion that downstrokes will bring to this lick. Also, this is a great candidate for high
distorted sounds and slide! Yeah, you can totally slide into the first note of each beat, from
wherever you want.
The last lick I’m going to show is almost like an alteration of the one I just showed you. The
rhythm pattern is basically the same, except for the ending. But what really makes this lick
sound like a real classic blues lick, is the bending. Bending is just such a blues thing to do. Let’s
check it out:
What you should do is bend the first note and keep the pressure there. Do not release the bending until the last note with a bending marking is played.
Well this is all for today! I hope you enjoyed this lesson and please remember to check out our entire collection of videos at:
