Lick of the Week 8

Lick of the week # 8
Tutorial
So, this is your lick of the week and today we have got another blues lick; this is a turnaround lick that will go over 5 and 4 of that turnaround part of your 12 Bar Blues progression. This is one that I particularly like because it's so easy to pluck it into some places. Before we get into the actual lick and the techniques that I am using, let's look at the scales that t is taken out of.

In this case, we would be in a 12 Bar Blues and A. So I am up kind of in this higher part of the fret board; so actually I am going to stay on my neck pickup here, for right now but essentially we are starting with the Blues scales, so I am just going to use this familiar blues-box. So in a Blues in A or five chord would be E and so what's kind of interesting is that I am using an E blue scale rather than just staying in A. So, up on this twelfth fret, we have got this familiar blues-box. So this lick is partly taken out of that E blues scale and then what we are going to do is take E Mixolydian and mix it into that blues scale.

So, Mixolydian is basically a major scale with a flatted 7, so there is a lot of different positions that you can use for this particular scale, but we will start this on the same root, on this E, on the 12th fret of the 6th string. So if I am going to do Mixolydian in a position where I can sort of add it into this blues scale, I am going to extend it from my first finger on the 12th fret; right where these two birds are hanging out.

So, here on the 12th up, that would be on my first finger; I have got 12, 14, 16, then 12-14-16, same thing on the 4th string. So you can hear 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and the note flat-7 note that makes us different from the major scale that is going to be here on the twelfth fret of the four strings; one more time and you hear that sounds like a major scale right up until we get here and then we are back on the root here and soon as I am doing that spread with my first, second and fourth, well I am sort of skipping every two frets here. So here is 1 again; 1, 2 and then I am back on 3 and here you could use either your first finger or your second. We are going to go 13, 14 and then 12, 14, 15 on the second string and then 12, 14, 16 on the top string.

So let's go up that scale one more time, and so the Mixolydian scale is really based of, of a dominant seventh chord which is what we are playing over in a 12 Bar Blues even as we get to the turnaround. And so, that's really the scale that sort of fits over a dominant seventh chord, the problem is it sounds too much like a scale, so that's why we generally use the blue scale or something resembling the blue scale. But to get some more notes to fill in some of these gaps, we can mix that Mixolydian scale back in and that's what this Lick does.

So the first thing that I really like about this is it's a Lick that you can really plug in, you can just keep it in your library or Licks in your mind and just throw it in whenever you need it. Probably because it starts on the end of the first beat, so it doesn't start right on the first beat and also it slides into the Lick. So, what's really nice about that is you can be playing in any other region of the neck and just sort of grab the sky out of thin air if you are having to improvise.

So, the first thing that we are doing is, I am using the second finger to slide in to this thirteenth fret of the third string and so that's going to be that third note out of that Mixolydian scale. So, normally in the blue scale, we have got this twelfth fret which is a G-natural, we are going to add this G#, add the Mixolydian, which is actually the third of an E7 chord which is what we are playing over right here, so we are going to hit that and then I am going to use hybrid picking here with my right hand; that's where I use, for instance, the middle finger of the right hand to pluck a string rather than the pick and I am going to use that middle finger to pluck the twelfth fret of the 1st string and I will use my first finger on the left hand. And so I pick 13, go to 12 up here and then pick 13 again.

So we actually get some nice dissonance in there as those intervals ring together. I have got a G# here and E up here, so that makes an interval of a sixth. Now , here comes the fun part, just kind of where there is, lightening blues riffs, where you are just kind of nailing through a scale well quick, but it really looks impressive on stage, and it's nice to have a few fast licks in your repertoire and so to mix that up with some slower bends and things like that.

So, here I am also using notes out of Mixolydian to throw into the blues scale. So, for the next part, I am also going to use the middle finger on the right hand to pluck this next string and I am going to do a pull-off. So I am pulling off from 15 to 14 to 12 and that's right out of that Mixolydian scale. So that first part of the lick will look like this and so I am going to use that middle finger once again to pluck that second string. So we pull off there and then we are also going to do the same kind of pull-off on the third string; this time I will use the pick and that's actually straight out of the blues scale, as you can see, so we are just doing that pull-off but then we will use a note out of E Mixolydian and so after I do that pull-off, I am going to hammer-on till 13 and that's what's known as adding the major third back into the blue scale; you hear that kind of sound all the time. So that's exactly what we are going to do, 12 to 13, so I am doing this pull-off, hammer-on the 13 and then we will pull-off again so that third string will look like this. So we are adding a lot of notes in there.

So that gets us through the first bar of this lick which is the E7 chord. So let's play that whole thing in context. We have got; one more time, one more time. Now we get to D7 and it's really important when you are playing a blues solo, to really try to follow the changes over the chords so long as you won't do that on a purpose, just to give like a cool effect when you are superimposing something over a chord.

Well, in this instance, we are going to try to hit chord tones over each chord. So as we get to D7, I am actually hitting this fourteenth fret, which is another note out of Mixolydian, so I am hitting the fourteenth fret of the fourth string, I am going to pull-off to 12 and then hammer back on to fourteen and then as I hammer-on, I am then going to slide to 16. Then as I get there, you could use hybrid picking here, I think I usually use my pick. I am going to be on the sixteenth fret of the fourth string, as I leave my finger there, I am going to use the middle finger or the second finger on the left hand to hit the fifteenth fret of the second string. So what's happening here is I am ending up on an F# note, which is the third of D7, which is the chord that we are on. Then I am hitting the D note, the fifteenth fret of the second string; that's the root of the chord. So I am hitting the third in a root, so that's a good way to outline the change.

The neat thing about this is, on the beginning of the lick, we hit the third and the root of the E-chord, now we are hitting the third and a root of the D-chord. So it sort of ties in together. So that will look like this; I will do the pull-off and I think I just picked that when I did the lick earlier. And then we are ending with this little sixteenth note, very fast strum, almost kind of like a funk figure and what I am doing there is just laying a finger across the seventeenth fret of the third and the second string and this kind of a fun little thing to do. I am hitting the C note, which is a flat-7 of the D7 chords, that's still a note in the chord and I am hitting an E note, which is the 9. So these are two notes that sound good against the 7th chord and having that 9 in there kind of gives it that nasty feel.

The other neat thing about this lick is that we have got a rest at the end of the measure. The nice thing about that is, it gives you a beat to get anywhere else you want on the neck. So , we could end this lick and go back down to a lower position or continue up higher. I th

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services