Play like B.B. King

B.B. King could say more with one note than most guitarists say with a hundred. His style is a single voice that sings, breathes and answers the band, with a shimmering vibrato you recognise instantly, from "The Thrill Is Gone" to "Live at the Regal". This chapter teaches you to play blues guitar like B.B. King, in A.

You begin with the B.B. box, a small cluster of notes on the top strings around the 10th fret that mixes major and minor pentatonic sounds, with a sweet bend to the major third. Single-note phrasing turns your solo into call and answer, with whole bars of silence. The butterfly vibrato lesson shows you the fast, narrow wrist shake at the heart of his sound. Economy of notes makes every note count, and sliding into the box connects box 1 to the B.B. box with vocal slides.

Every exercise plays as tab in your browser with a click and a tempo ladder, and each lesson ends with a checkpoint. Keep the tone clean and warm, and let your touch do the talking.