Hey it's Nate Savage here again and welcome to video #10 of the Blues Guitar Quick-Start Series.
In this lesson, we're going to talk about turnaround blues licks. Now, if you
don't know what those are, don't worry I'm going to explain to you exactly what they
are. And then we're going to through and learn a few turnaround blues licks that you can
use in your solos. So, what is a blues turnaround lick? If you
remember a couple of lessons ago, we were talking about how to make your licks fit over
whatever chord you're playing over. A blues turnaround lick is just a lick that's custom
made to fit over the last two chord changes of the 12-bar blues or the last two bars of
the 12-bar blues which is a I chord and a V chord. In this case, we’re in the key
of E blues so that's going to be an E chord and a B chord.
A lot of players will memorize turnaround licks because in measures eleven and twelve
of the 12-bar blues, the chords are going back pretty quick. There's only one measure
of the I chord and one measure of the V chord. It's really nice to have a solid lick that
you know will be there for you when try to get back around to the beginning of the 12-bar
blues progression again. So, with that in mind, I have three blues
turnaround licks that I'm going to teach you here that you can learn and kind of add to
your library for these types of licks. This first blues turnaround lick incorporates
something that is really common in turnaround licks and that's to hit the one or the down
beat of the first of the last two measures in the 12-bar blues with a really strong root
note over the I chord, right? So you hit that quarter note and that's your first note of
this turnaround lick. From there, you're going to see a 3rd fret of the B string and a 4th
fret of the G string but they have little slashes in front of them. So that means you're
going to want to slide up to those notes. And you're not only going to hit those notes,
the G and the B strings, but you're also going to incorporate the high E string too on that
strum so. So altogether, you're going to strum that six times but the first on has that little
slide in there. So, so far, you have the big down beat. From
there you're going to see a slash with a two in front of them in the G string. That's telling
you to slide down to the 2nd fret of the G string and then you're going to hit that G
string open and then the 2nd fret of the D string. So, so far, you have...From there
the second measure to go back into the V chord, all we're going to do is walk up the blues
scale starting on the low E string – open E string ,3rd fret, then open A string,
1st fret of the A string, then the 2nd fret of the A string, which is a B note, so we land
for our B chord. So that second measure is... So take this slowly. Go as slowly as you need to kind
of connect the dots for this whole lick and it’ll sound like this.
Alright, this next turnaround lick is a little bit challenging. I'll show you why. It starts
off same with the last one did, that strong down beat on the E. It's E power chord this
time though. From there, you're going to make a bar on the 4th fret across the top three
strings. You're not going to be playing the B string at all but it's easier to make this
bar than it is to make the shape with two fingers. So that's the way I do it. And you're
going to play with actually you're second and third fingers on your picking hand. You're
going to pluck those and then you're going to come back and play the 6th fret of the
D string with your pinky. And then come back and play those other two notes with your second
and third fingers. And that's kind of your pattern you're going to be using here.
And you don't have to do it like this. You don't have to use your fingers and pick to
play like this, but if you choose to just strum this rhythm right here, you can't use a bar,
'cause you’ed be letting your B string ring out. You have to grab these two notes with
your first and second finger. And then this note would be pinky and just strum them. But
that's your pattern as far as a hybrid picking thing goes so fingers pick fingers. And what
you're going to do is just move that shape down one fret, do the same thing, move it
down again, same exact thing. So you start with your power chord. And that
takes care of the first measure of this lick. The last measure of this lick is just...you're
going to play your first finger on the G string and then the open E string and pluck those
two notes. From there, you just walk up to notes on the A string for the blues scale
up to that B note. So open A, 1st fret of the A, and then the B string. So that entire thing.
And one thing that I should mention, if you're
playing with your fingers, one thing that helps me kind of get some separation between
those notes is if I pluck and then come down with my pinky. I let off the pressure on my
index finger and then when I go back to the plucking I let off with my pinky. So I just
get some separation, otherwise it will bleed all over each other; which you might want
you might not, just depends on the style you want to portray.
This next turnaround lick is actually coming up the next lesson too. We're going to learn
how to play our blues riff with some lead lines interject. So, it's good that you're
going to learn it here. It starts off with another strong down beat on an E power chord, then
you're going to take your third and fourth fingers on the 3rd fret of the G and high
E strings. And you're going to slide those two notes up to the 4th fret once you pick
them. You can either, you can strum them or pick them with your picking fingers, it's
up to you. I like to do it this way and celebrate more accurate for me I don't have to worry
about that B string ringing out this much. But you're going to see two fours with slashes
in front of them. Again that just means to slide into those fourth frets from below.
And you're going to play two of those swung eighth notes then move on to the 3rd fret.
Play 2 more swung eighth notes, 2nd fret, same thing. And from there, you're going to
make a B7 chord, we haven't learn this shape in this series yet but you're going
to learn it now. That's fine. And you're kind of basically doing down, down, down on the
first three strings of the shape and then you're doing a strum across the top two strings.
And the shape for this is just your second finger on the 2nd fret of the A string. First
finger is going to grab the 1st fret of the D string. Third finger is going to grab the
2nd fret of the G. Pinky is going to grab the 2nd fret of the high E. You don't play
the E string at all here, rest of the five strings here on this chord. So you have down,
down, down. On the A, D and G strings. And then kind of a strum for the top B and E strings.
Now that you know what a turnaround lick is and you've been exposed to a couple of them.
You can start building your own library of turnaround licks. You know, listen to your
favorite players, take their turnaround licks and add them to your own library.
So pull up one of the jam tracks, it doesn't matter which one, 70 beats per minute a 100 beats
per minute, and try to play some turnaround licks in. If you can't really think that for
a head, don't worry about it just count along until you get to measures eleven and twelve
of the jam track, right? And just throw in the turnaround lick there.
So that does it for the turnaround blues lick lesson. In the next lesson, we're going to
take everything that you've learned in this series and put it together. We're going to
go through the more dressed up blues riff that we learned but we're going to interject
some blues little lead licks in there, too. So get ready for that. If you have any questions,
leave them here in the comments or e-mail me nate@guitarsystem.com. See you.