Blues Licks

Great blues solos are built from a handful of licks played with real feeling: bends that hit the pitch, double-stops that punch, and phrases that talk to each other. This chapter gives you that vocabulary in the key of A and teaches you how to make it sing.

You'll start with classic blues guitar licks in minor pentatonic box 1: a B-string bend that falls down the box, a double-stop push and a rolling triplet loop. Then you'll learn the BB box, the small cluster of notes around the 10th fret where bending from the minor to the major third gives that sweet, crying sound associated with B.B. King. You'll practice call and response, leaving space so each phrase can breathe, and learn to target the major third of A7, D7 and E7 so your lines follow the changes of a 12-bar blues instead of just running the scale.

The chapter closes with a lick library from beginner to advanced: a growling low-string lick, a slide into box 2 and a pull-off cascade. Each one comes with tab you can hear in your browser before you play it.