Hello my friends.
Justin here, this is the start of my new series of lessons
on how to play Blues Lead Guitar.
And before getting into learning licks and scales and stuff,
I want to talk a little bit about the process of learning Blues guitar.
So of course there's one element of playing Blues guitar
is learning scales and licks, that kind of thing.
So the way I want you to think about it is that the scale is the alphabet,
particularly, like, the Minor Pentatonic scale.
that is kinda your Blues alphabet, and using that one alphabet
you can speak lots of languages like Country, Blues, Jazz or whatever,
all of those different styles all use the Minor Pentatonic scale,
but what makes Blues Blues is the licks, and the lick you can think of as being a word.
So, after you've learned your alphabet which'll be your,
. . .
your Minor Pentatonic scale, just playing up and down the scale,
. . .
doesn't really sound bluesy.
What you need to make it sound bluesy is a word,
a combination or a way of putting those letters,
the notes together to make it sound like a word.
Like, straight away it sounds like blues, or, any of those things or
. . .
They're all just little ways of using that scale.
To enable you to play blues, so it's not just about learning the scale.
And it's not just about learning licks, so what's the other element?
The other element is listening to blues, and actually being able to
kind of absorb the character of the blues.
Now, if you look at any of the great blues guitar players,
whether they be the whiteys like you know, your Eric Clapton,
or Stevie Ray Vaughan, or BB King, Albert King,
Freddie King, these three Kings, and all of that sort of stuff,
If you listen to their music, you'll hear their words.
Now they didn't learn by some guy on the internet, like me, teaching you licks.
Right, they learned by listening to other blues artists,
and by, say, if you look at someone like Clapton
he just, definitely didn't use MX Tabs or anything like that.
He used old blues records that he listened to,
and tried to figure out how to play the licks.
So, I'm gonna show you the scale to start off with,
not in this lesson, but in a future one.
We're gonna have a look at the scale so you understand what it is,
what the alphabet is.
Then we're gonna start to, I'm gonna show you some licks.
But really what you wanna do is be finding the licks yourselves,
off records, which involves transcribing.
Now, not being one to try and flog my own products too much,
however, I have this little pack for sale on my website,
called Really Useful Blues Solos.
And what it contains is five tracks of guitar solo where
I emulate, and kind of use their licks, if you like,
like Albert King, Eric Clapton,
Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry.
Now those things are kind of condensed versions of those artists.
So if you wanted to learn say, Albert King, the best way,
would be to go and get an Albert King album, and learn all of his licks.
Yeah, like try and transcribe them and work them out yourself.
If you wanna use my pack, it's kind of a slightly easier version.
You can get just as much if not more benefit from doing it off Albert King.
Cause of course me emulating Albert King isn't as good as Albert King.
If you wanted to use my version you'd get the track,
you'd try and work it out and then I also supply you with a transcription
of the way I played it so if you get stuck in your working out,
you can refer to my paperwork to try and do it.
A lot of people I don't think have kind of sussed that out.
but there's so many people that I've had e-mails from,
and a lot of my private students that have used that really useful Blues Solo Package,
to get their Blues vocabulary together.
I'm not flogging it to you just because it's my product.
It's cause it really works, it is a good method for teaching you licks.
Right,so, you've got your licks, so they're your words.
But really what you want to do is, you want to speak sentences.
You want to make up something, you want to express something to someone else.
So, then you have to learn how to use your licks,
how to combine one lick with another lick and,
also how to use one lick in as many different ways as you can.
Which is something else that we're gonna get onto doing,
after we've talked about the scale and the blues licks and stuff like that.
There's quite a lot of, I've given you already quite a lot of info on that.
So let's start to talk a little bit more about the word thing.
So different words would be akin to different artists.
So there are certain words like
. . .
which is kind of an Albert King lick that Clapton uses a lot of the time as well.
So it doesn't end up being a, you know, it might be,
originally come from Albert King or maybe he got it from someone else.
Maybe he got it from Hubert Sumlin, or Robert Johnson,
or whatever, where they came from initially, I'm not exactly sure, to tell the truth.
I'm guessing that someone made some stuff up somewhere.
It's a which came first the chicken or the egg,
but actually there must have been some thing coming from somewhere.
I should know the answer to that, and I don't actually.
But, anyway, so we're talking about words, different words,
different people, so you can kind of, different styles,
of blues have different words, so, like a Texas blues,
might use a different word to a traditional kind of Albert King-y or
BB King style thing, different people have different accents
on the way they use the words, BB King's got his very sharp vibrato.
That kind of like really n-n-n-n vibrato, and that would be kind of his style.
So if you start to use his words you'll have a kind of a BB King accent.
Jimi Hendrix has little specialist things, he's got,
is one of his classic little licks, if you start using that word a lot,
it'll start to sound like Hendrix, but, you could start to mix them all up again,
and go like Hendrix, Stevie Ray (plays) and suddenly then you've got like a blues solo,
and it's your blues solo.
It's you, if you mix up the words, it's the same as saying that,
a lot of people say, oh I can't learn licks because then I'm gonna sound
like other people, well yeah, that's kinda the point,
lets put it back into the word analogy.
So, if you wanted to be a poet, if you just picked random letters
from the English language, and stick them together,
and you end up with these words that no one knows what they mean
or what they are, and then you try and speak your poetry,
it might be really original and no one's done it before.
But no one's going to understand what the hell you're talking about.
So there's no point.
Whereas if you in a poet would learn normal English words.
And look for cool ways of using words for probably,
from other poets or other authors.
And then they would stick them together in their own unique way.
That's what you're trying to do when you're doing a blues solo.
Especially if you're playing blues, blues is quite,
using the right blues words is quite an important bit,
cause that's what somebody listening hears and goes,
oh yeah, he's playing blues, I recognize blues.
And then they can dig on the rest of the things that you're saying,
even if you chucked in like a jazz lick or your own weird variation of a lick.
Once you've kind of settled into the style that you're playing blues,
and people are understanding it, it makes a lot more sense to the listener.
So, hopefully I've given you enough of a bowl on using the thinking,
of licks as words, and the scales as the alphabet.
So we're gonna learn scales first, then we're gonna learn some licks,
then I'm gonna show you how to use the licks,
and explain to you a little bit more about where to find your own licks.
So remember the best way to get your own licks,
is definitely, no question, original blues records,
and try to work them out yourself, if you really struggle with that,
and you need a hand, then it would be a good idea probably,
for you to check out my Really Useful Blues Solos pack,
which is available on the website, if you go to the product section
of justinguitar.com, and that way you get the solo to work out,
and you get a transcription of me playing that solo,
in whatever style, so if you get stuck when you're trying to work it out yourself,
you can refer to my notes and it'll kinda pull you through.
So without further ado I think it's time for the next lesson.
I've done enough gassing and not enough talking.
'Cause I know there's some of you gonna go,
'you talk too much', in the comments and stuff.
Well I kinda feel like I had to to start this series off.
So, the next thing we're gonna check out is the main scales that get used in blues.
And hopefully that'll get your alphabet well sorted out.
Hope all that makes sense, and there'll be support notes of course on the website.
Go and check it out.
And, I will see you all for lesson two very soon.
Later dudes, bye bye.