Hey, how’s it going this is Claude Johnson with Guitar Control, back with another Lick of the Day Lesson for you. In the last lesson we did a Slash inspired lick that was almost in the shred zone and today we’re going to go back to the basics and do a bluesy, bendy kind of lick.
Now, I assume you know basic stuff like bends, vibrato, pentatonic scales. If you don’t know this stuff, definitely check out my lead guitar
course for beginners. It’s at playleadguitar.com. All right, let’s go into the lick. Let’s give you a close-up shot.
So we’re going to start off this lick on the high E-string, 15th fret. You can either use your ring finger or your pinky and we’re going to be bending
up a whole step and adding some vibrato.
From there, we’re just going to play the normal 15th on the high E-string and then the 12th on the high E-string. And then 15th on the high E-string,
15th on the B. Then 12th again on the B. And then one more bend, same kind of bend as the 1st bend, but it’s on the B-string now. Bend 15 to the 17th on the B.
So again, bend, 15, 12, 15, 15th, 12th, 12th and then one more bend on the 15th on the B. Real slow. The rhythm, you can feel it out any way you want.
What I like to do basically is just do kind of like three beats on that 1st bend. 1, 2, 3, and then I go into 8th notes. 4 and 1 and 2 and so like this 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, 2, 1.
So a great variation on this lick, instead of bending up a whole step, let’s bend up two whole steps and then we’ll go back and just bend up one step. Kind of like this. This was a great technique used by like Freddie King, used to do these multiple kind of bends even before BB. King. Again, just play the note, make sure you’re bending it up to pitch. It might require a lot of finger strength. Don’t strain yourself. Bend it up and it’s just a great expression.
So there you have the lick of the day. Next time we’ll do something a little bit more advanced. Stay tuned; stay with us and rock on.
