Eric Johnson Guitar Lick in A Minor

Video Transcript

"O'kay what we're going to do now is a lick in the key of A Minor. I'm going to use the A Minor pentatonic scale and this one is a little bit tricky because we are going to do notes in groups of five. I'll explain that after you hear what the lick sounds like. You might hear a guy like Eric Johnson do a lick like this. I'm going to play it four times for you so let's see what it sounds like, three, four. Let's break this lick down a little bit. This one is in the twelve position up here at the twelfth fret where the double dots are. This uses groups of five notes at a time so what I do is I start on the G on the fifteenth fret of the high E string and I descend five notes in the A Minor pentatonic scale and after that what I do is I jump back up one string where I just came from which would be the B string and then I descend five notes in the same scale from there so here's the first group of five notes, then I jump up to the B string and here's the next group of five notes, continuing on with that I'm going to jump up a string that I just came from so now we're jumping from the D to the G string where I have the A note here on the 14th fret and I am going to descend five notes from there as well. So altogether you've got one, two, three, four, five then you are going to do another five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five and then at the end you've got a position shift down to the tenth fret on the A string which would be a G note and then your root note A here which I use vibrato at the very end which is shaking the string back and forth. Another thing that you don't necessarily have to do but I did it when I played the lick is I lightly rake to the top note here. I think I did it the second time I played the lick so it just gives the lick a little bit of life instead of playing it flat. Like I said it is not necessary but something cool to add to it. There's your five, one, two, three, four, five and then your last two notes in a different position shift. You might want to practice each group of five notes by itself first and then put the whole thing together and then after you feel comfortable with each individual group of five notes you'll be able to pick up more of what the actual phrasing of this lick sounds like so let me do it for you here really slow and you can hear the whole thing together, two, three, four, three, four, two, three, four."