Combining Blues Chords and Licks

You can combine them. But, its quite difficult to pull it off with any accuracy. Why? Well, unless you have hands like Hendrix, youre gonna have a very hard time playing the rhythm AND solo parts at the same time. So, what you have to do is this:

A chord,D chord,A Chord,A Lick,A chord,D chord,D lick,A chord,A lick,E chord,A chord,A lick. *so you'll mostly be playing A pentatonic licks here*

You can play around with that for awhile. Its important that you play the chord of the lick first to sort of establish the sound and then on the next bar, you noodle out a lick. You should be quite at home with playing the singular rhythm part first before you try it this way of course.

After youre ok with this format. Try, doing two chords and two licks per bar. This is really where you want to be. It would look like this:

[First bar]
Chord, lick, Chord, lick

[second bar]
Rinse and repeat.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Merman, that certainly helps......Is there a rule of thumb for what particular note your lick starts on? ie. can i slide in from a particular note, play several more and then land on a the target note of D, say for the D chord?
Also im interested to know how you obtain the building of crescendo's in blues....You know when you here a series of notes take you higher and then they drop off, then build again, is this using different licks in various pentatonic scales or just the same kind of lick but just moving it up the fretboard? I saw this guy on a DVD play these licks that lead up to a various chords which he either strummed once or twice and then moved on to another lick.
Sorry there's a few questions here!!! It's just that someone told me that its better to understand the principles behind this rather than just leanring a load of licks and only being able to apply just them.

Thanks again

there are some good lessonsexamples at fender players club, Texas Rock for eg

Thanks Merman, that certainly helps......Is there a rule of thumb for what particular note your lick starts on? ie. can i slide in from a particular note, play several more and then land on a the target note of D, say for the D chord?
Also im interested to know how you obtain the building of crescendo's in blues....You know when you here a series of notes take you higher and then they drop off, then build again, is this using different licks in various pentatonic scales or just the same kind of lick but just moving it up the fretboard? I saw this guy on a DVD play these licks that lead up to a various chords which he either strummed once or twice and then moved on to another lick.
Sorry there's a few questions here!!! It's just that someone told me that its better to understand the principles behind this rather than just leanring a load of licks and only being able to apply just them.

Thanks again

Nope. You can start/end on whatever notes you please. But, some will sound better than others. And, of course it depends on what youre trying to say. You can most certainly do what you stated in your example.

I dont know if you would call it a "crescendo". But, I think what youre referring to might just be a scale run. What I usually do to get that effect (when playing in pattern/box format) is simply start at the lowest note and work my way-note to note-until I climax at the highest note. I do it with alternate picking and hammer-ons. You have to do it rapidly for it to sound good though. After that, you can throw in a chord (like the player you noted did) to add some strength to the passage. Or at least I think that is what you mean :(

Hope that helped you. :)

Thats exactly what i meant, thanks for the advice once again...starting to get it a bit now...! :)