Blues licks!!

I don't know if you subscribe to the Guitar Noiise News, but a message just came around recently about a "freebie" from Amazing Guitar Secrets. He wrote up a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) on "How To Solo With the Major, Minor & Blues Pentatonic Scales." The idea is for you to eventually come up with some licks of your own, maybe throwing in bends and slides and such.
Check out http://www.amazingguitarsecrets.com/cmd.php?Clk=1407284 to see if it's still available.

I'd just recomend checking out Cream's Crossroads. Clapton's solos can really provide you with a lot of great blues licks that are commonly used.

You may want to seek out the book, Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar, by Arnie Berle.

You may want to seek out the book, Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar, by Arnie Berle.

Also check out "Blues you can Use". One of my favorite books.

Here are some great Blues licks. You know, it took me years to learn this stuff. I am going to send you a bill.

This first one is awesome, but tricky. You play a double stop (two notes at once) with your index and pinky fingers. As soon as you pick the double stop, slide the index finger up two frets sounding BOTH notes. Then you play a descending scale with the index. The trick is getting the double-stop sliding notes. Very cool lick.


Tied

e-------------------------------
b--—10p-10-10---10-10---5-------
g----7i/-9--9----8--7---5h-6----
d-----------------------------7-
a-------------------------------
e-------------------------------


Here is a cool and easy lick Chuck Berry made famous:


e---5i-----------5-----------5-------------5-
b---5i---/10r----5----/10----5-----/10-----5-
g--------/-9m---------/-9----------/-9-------
d--------------------------------------------
e--------------------------------------------


Here is a great Blues lick you hear in School's Out by Alice Cooper:


A7 D trill

e-------------------------------------------
b-------8m---------7i-------7r—-5i----------
g-------9r---------7i-------7r—-5itr6-------
d—7i-7-------7i-7------7r-7-------------7---
a-------------------------------------------
e-------------------------------------------


Here is a great turnaround, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top plays this one a lot:


A

e-------------
b---6i---5----
g---8p---7----
d---7m---6----
a---8r---7----
e-------------


Very common Blues lick:

trill

This is a super cool technique where you skip over strings:


A D

e----------------------------------------7m--5--
b----------------------------------------X----X--
g----------------------------------------7i--5--
d----------------7i-5---------------------------
a---------------------------5i-5----/9r----------
e---5i-5----/9r----------------------------------


Here's an old Blues lick Jimmy Page played a lot:


e----------------------------------------
b----------------------------------------
g----------------------------------------
d------7p---------7p---------7p------7p-
a---4i----4----5i----5----6i----6----7r-
e----------------------------------------


These should keep you busy for awhile. 8)

Here's a few more Blues Licks You Need To Know. Have fun.

Joe

Listening to other people's work and trying to reproduce it yourself is a good starting point. What happens is you get it sort of close, but not quite, early on and then when you're trying to get that last few notes fixed you come out with something that makes you go "Wow, that sounds good" and you try to remember it or scribble it down on a piece of paper.

Et voila (not a very blues phrase, I know) - a bigger collection of decent and usable licks.

Best,

A :-)

Spot on Al - here's two I'm really into playing with at the moment... (both from memory as I'm sat at work, so forgive any bum notes you may come across) The first is a solo that's all contained in just a few notes - it's inspirational that this much melody contained in such a small space.

e ----------------------------------------------------------
B ----------------------------------------------------------
G --7b9r7-----5-----5--5/75-----5-------7b9--7b9--7b9--7b9-
D ----------7-----7------------7-----7-5--------------------
A ----------------------------------------------------------
E ----------------------------------------------------------

e ----------------------------------------------------------
B -----8----------------------------------------------------
G -7b9----9r7-5-----5--5/75-----5-------5--------5-5-5-5-5-
D ----------------7------------7-----7-5-5--------5-5-5-5-5-
A ---------------------------------------3--------3-3-3-3-3-
E ----------------------------------------------------------


The first part of the second line is the part that I make most use of, and it's easy enough to use that basic idea in any of the pentatonic shapes for different sounds.

This second one is a small snippet of another solo, and it's really nice to throw into a pentatonic if you're stuck (first pentatonic box), as it works best with a gap just before it and that masks the fact that the gap wasn't intentional :) Sounds great if you only pick the e string and do the rest legato up to the double stop at the end.

e --5------5--------------------
B -----8p5---8p5-----------5----
G ---------------7p5-7p5---5----
D -----------------------7------

Great thread by the way, this is exactly what I need to be doing next, building up my library :)

Very cool thread! Thanks for starting it, Art. I for one have also been working on improvising to blues progressions and find this very helpful!

I don't know if you subscribe to the Guitar Noiise News, but a message just came around recently about a "freebie" from Amazing Guitar Secrets. He wrote up a PDF (Adobe Acrobat) on "How To Solo With the Major, Minor & Blues Pentatonic Scales." The idea is for you to eventually come up with some licks of your own, maybe throwing in bends and slides and such.
Check out http://www.amazingguitarsecrets.com/cmd.php?Clk=1407284 to see if it's still available.

When you go through the process it gives you a link to the following:

http://amazingguitarsecrets.com/blog/2006/05/free-40-page-e-book-how-to-solo-with.html

oktay

Our very own Guitar Noise site

https://www.guitarnoise.com/lessons/blues-solo-improvisation/

Keith

Ps
I also have the book Blues You Can Use also More Blues You Can Use by John Ganapes that Dagwood mentioned they are very good

I also have the book Blues You Can Use also More Blues You Can Use by John Ganapes that Dagwood mentioned they are very good

And don't forget "Blues Licks You Can Use"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0634008293/sr=8-4/qid=1147822954/ref=sr_1_4/104-2306473-1401533?%5Fencoding=UTF8

P.S. What's the difference between a riff, a lick, and a phrase?

It ain't even close to official, but I've always taken phrase to be each seperate chunk of melody that goes into making up the song/solo, a lick to be a subset of phrases that are reused more often (ie, they're the phrases you incorporate into an improvistaion as opposed to the phrases that are spontanious), and a riff being a repeated phrase/lick that makes the theme of a song (or part of a song), ie, the bit that the song keeps coming back to.

Then again, I've never run into anyone who's been crying into their cornflakes about people interchanging them all... :mrgreen:

Here are some great Blues licks. You know, it took me years to learn this stuff. I am going to send you a bill.
..
These should keep you busy for awhile. 8)

Many thanks, Wes! I'm having a lot of fun with these!

Amistad