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Lead Licks
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Turn one simple scale into a blues solo that rocks
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Our first three licks all have the same phrasing: three eighth notes, starting on the and of beat 3, followed by a quarter note on the downbeat of the next measure. It may seem weird or uncreative to play a series of licks with the exact same phrasing, but as some bright soul once pointed out, you can’t have a theme and variations if you have no theme.
Example 4 shows our first actual lick. Since its last note is an A (the root of an A chord) that lands squarely on the one (downbeat) of the second measure, you can think of this lick as targeting, or aiming for, the root of an A chord. To get the timing, count “one-and two-and three-and four-and” evenly and aloud twice. Play your first note on the and after the second three.
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Example 4
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Change the last note to a D (the root of a D chord), as in Example 5, and this lick targets a D chord.
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Example 5
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The lick in Example 6 is the same lick moved down a string so it lands on an E, the root of an E chord, and so targets an E chord.
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Example 6
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“Thematic Blues,” below, shows one strictly thematic way of playing through a 12-bar blues progression using Examples 4, 5, and 6 to target the roots of each chord as they go by.
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"Thematic Blues"
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Slides and Hammer-Ons
We’ve been targeting the E on the seventh fret of the fifth string, but there’s an E an octave higher at the fifth fret of the second string. You can also play that E by sliding out of position for a moment, from the seventh to the ninth fret on the third string, as shown in Example 7 below. We’ll use this sliding move to land on an E chord in a moment, but first we’ll use it to start a new lick that targets an A chord.
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Example 7
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To play Example 8, play the seventh fret of the third string, fretting it with your ring finger, then immediately slide your finger up two frets to the ninth fret. Then move your ring finger back to the seventh fret and play the rest of the lick.
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Example 8
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To turn this into a D-targeting lick, we’ll use a hammer-on (shown in Example 9). Start with your index finger at the fifth fret of the third string, pick the first note, hold it for a half beat, and drop (hammer on) your ring finger to the seventh fret of the same string in a single quick motion. You shouldn’t need to pick the string a second time to hear the second note, but it may take a little practice to get it right. (Try aiming for the wood of the fingerboard, not the string.)
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Example 9
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Example 10 is like Example 9 but it ends with a hammer-on to D.
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Example 10
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Ending this lick with a slide from D to E gives us a variation that targets the root of the V chord, E7, as in Example 11. You’ll need to make a quick jump with your ring finger from the fourth to the third string; it’s OK if the note on the fourth string gets cut a little short at first while you get used to this move.
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Example 11
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See what this sounds like in measure 9 of “Target Practice,” a 12-bar blues solo using this lick and ending on either an A, D, or E, found below.
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"Target Practice"
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Call and Response
Now that you’ve got some licks helping to spell out the chord progression, let’s answer each lick with a contrasting phrase, an approach called “call and response.” If you look at each line of the blues—the first four bars, the middle four bars, and the last four bars—you’ll see that the third measure of each line is always the I chord. So in the key of A, it will always be safe to land on an A (the root of the I chord) on the downbeat of the third chord of each line. This means that instead of just leaving open space after the first lick of each line, or repeating the same lick twice in each line (as in “Target Practice”), you can answer each root-targeting lick with a new lick, like the one in Example 12, that resolves to A.
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Example 12
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Let’s wrap things up with one more chorus of the blues in A. “Long-Distance Call (and Response),” below, shows how this call and response sounds in a full 12-bar blues.
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"Long-Distance Call"
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The blues is all about making the most of a few ingredients, so take these ideas about root targeting, call and response, and transposing and go cook up some ideas of your own.
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