Blues Guitar Licks in the Key of E

Video Transcript

"All right, here's a bluesy lick in the key of E. It's going to use a couple of different scales, the pentatonic scale, the blues scale, and there's even a note from the dorian mode, the sixth. I'm going to play this lick twice, at regular speed and then break it down for you. So, let's see what it sounds like. Two, three, four. It's probably best if I break this down into three sections, and look at each one at a time, then put the whole thing together at the end. We start out using the E blues scale, and I bend to the E, from the D on the fifteenth fret of the B string. Then we've got two notes on the twelfth fret, the high E string and the B string, and I do that with an up-stroke and a down-stroke. And then we're going to go to the fifteenth of the B string, then down to the twelfth on the B and the fifteenth on the G string. Then we're going to do a pull-off from the fifteenth, to the fourteenth, to the twelfth on the G, landing up on the E note on the fourteenth of the D. Then we're going to switch to the fourteenth of the G, back to the fourteenth of the D. Now, if we go back a couple of minutes ago, I had two notes on the twelfth fret of the B and the high E. And then we just did two notes on the fourteenth of the D and the G. You've got to be careful when you've got multiple notes on different strings but the same fret, that it doesn't ring together. It sounds sloppy, like a chord. You want to have separation between the notes, so what I do, is I kind of pivot my finger, roll it a little bit and that way I can get clarity between the two notes. So what we've got so far. One more time. We'll call that section one. Let me go to section two now, real simple. It shifts, the position shifts to the eleventh fret of the G string, and we do a hammer and pull-off combination to the twelfth fret. One more time. And then we reach with our pinky to the fourteenth of the D string, pull it off to the twelfth and then hammer it back on. I'm using my second finger for that twelfth fret note. So the second section is very simple. The third section is going to start on the eleventh of the D string, doing the same hammer-on, pull-off combination we just did a second ago, Eleven, twelve and back. And we reach down to the eighth string now, we've got fourteen, twelve and ten, as a pull-off. And then finally landing on the root eat note, eat note? the root E note on the twelfth fret of the low string. I guess I'm hungry. So, let me put the three sections together. Second section. Last section. You'll notice in some spots I do pull-offs, you can pick the notes if you want. It'll just sound more aggressive, it won't have the smooth feel that this blues lick and most blues licks like this tend to have. Okay, let me play it for you twice in a row with our backing track at a slower tempo and you can hear what it sounds like in context. Three, four."