Check out Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman, aka Uncle D, with another installment on the pentatonic sequence licks series. This time Uncle D covers some licks and ideas in the style of Eric Clapton. So grab your guitar and the free tabs and get rockin’ on these classic pentatonic licks, Clapton style.
Introduction
How’s it going everybody? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing this video lesson and today I’ve got some licks and lick ideas for you in the style of Eric Clapton.
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 be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get a close-up and take a look at these.
About The Licks
All right, so first thing I’m going to show you three completely isolated Eric Clapton licks that you may not hear and recognize what song it’s from, but these are things that I chose because they are typical kinds of licks that he does. And then after we do these three then I’m going to show you the intro melody lead for Layla to sort of put the concepts together.
Eric Clapton Lick-1
All right, so this first lick is pretty easy. All of these are relatively easy to play, but they hopefully will give you some ideas for your for own playing. So the first one here we’re starting here on the 10th fret on the B string and we’re in D minor pentatonic. So we’re going to pick this 10 and then I’m going to hammer to the 13th fret and pull back off to 10. So this is this is a triplet, so these are eighth note triplets, so trip-le-t. So that takes care of beat one and then for beat two we’re gonna go here to the 12th fret on the G string and that’s a quarter note… and then you should repeat that… So you can see the idea… A lot of cool ways that you could play the same sequence and just change up the timing and tempo and kind of make it your own.
Eric Clapton Lick-2
All right and then lick number two… For this one we’re in E minor pentatonic, but it has some passing tones in here. So we’ve talked a lot about that in the past and this is just going to kind of give you an example. So we’re going to start off here on the 15th fret of the B string and we’re going to pick this and we’re going to bend it up a whole step and it’s a quarter note… so that takes care of beat one. And then on the downbeat of two we’re going to the 13th fret and that’s adding in an F that’s not in the pentatonic scale and technically it’s not even in the key of E minor. In E minor it’s F sharp, but by having this passing tone in there you can really get some interesting sounds. All right, so we do that bend on the B string and then we’re gonna go to the 13th fret on the high E string and we’re going to pick that and hammer-on to the 15th fret. So this is one, two and, and then on the downbeat of three we’re going to go back to the 15th fret on the B string and we’re going to bend that up a full step and it’s an eighth note. And then it’s we release it to an eighth note. So this is the downbeat of three, three and. And then to 13 on the B string and when we go to 13 on the B string we’re hitting this C, which again is not part of the pentatonic scale, but it is in the key… So after we do the bend and release, three and, four and then that’s tied to a whole note on the next measure… So you can really kind of hear that Clapton kind of sound in there and again you can take this and add it into other things…
Eric Clapton Lick-3
All right, and then the third one here, and this one’s really short, it’s just a single measure lick. We’re going to start here on the seventh fret, and one thing too I forgot to mention is any of these things we’re doing here are all movable and you can just move them down into a different positions and you’d still get the same sequence, but you just do it in a different key since this doesn’t involve any open strings. So we’re starting here on the seventh fret on the G string and this is a quarter note, so it’s beat number one. So we’ll hit that and throw a little vibrato on it and then on the downbeat of two we’re gonna go to the seventh fret on the D string and we’re going to pick that do a hammer-on to nine, two and then back to seven on the G string. So we hit it twice, so it’s one, two and, three and, four, so it’s tied to four…
Eric Clapton Lick-4 – Layla
All right and then the last thing I want to show you here is this intro lead from Layla just to see how some of these things are incorporated in there and then again showing some samples of passing tones. So we’re gonna come up here we’re gonna start on the 10th fret of the B string and I’m gonna pick that and then do a hammer-on to the 13th fret then I’m going to go to the high E string and do the same thing. And then I’m gonna pull back off to ten… this is 16th note, so one e and uh, two B and three. So that’s our entire first measure… Okay now we have to we hit that bend on beat number four and then starting on the second measure we’re gonna release the bend and we’re gonna go 13, 12 and then 13 on the B string, ten on the high E string and those are all quarter notes, so it’s one, two, three, four… Okay, so the third measure is the same as the first measure, except for one thing, so we’re going to start off the same way with the 10 hammer to 13 on the B string and then to 10 hammer to 13, pull to 10 on the high E, back to 13 on the B string, back to 10 on the high E string. So it’s the same as that first measure except the very last note. So on the first measure the last note we bend the 13th fret on the high string, but now we’re going to shift up and we’re going to bend the 15th fret. So we’re going to do the same thing that we did we’re going to bend that on four and then this the fourth measure starts on 15, quarter notes, 1 to 12 and then 13 on the B string for beats three and then back to 10 on the high E for beat four… All right so like I said here we’re doing your basic pentatonics stuff. We’ve got parts we’re adding in, these passing tones… So this is out of Mixolydian and that’s like a really common thing. I’m not really mixing Mixolydian into pentatonic and I’m not going to get into that today. I’ve done a couple of lessons on that already.
Conclusion
All right, so there you have it, three basic licks in the style of Eric Clapton and then the intro lead sequence for Layla. 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.
