Don’t be a prisoner of the pentatonic box. Time to break out!
Beginner
Beginner
• Create blazing pentatonic licks that span the entire neck.
• Understand how to move a motif through the scale.
• Learn how to develop variations on simple licks.
Let’s start with a simple idea in Ex. 1. It consists of four sixteenth-notes from the A minor pentatonic scale (A–C–D–E–G) in the 5th position. Once you get this phrase under your fingers, the rest of the lesson will come together nicely. The picking I use for this lick is a downstroke followed by a pull-off, another downstroke, and then one upstroke. I’ve seen many people start with an upstroke and change it up. It’s your call.
Now that you have the idea let’s break out and head up the neck. In Ex. 2, we move to the 8th position. If you want to think in terms of the pentatonic scale, we are moving each note in the motif up to the next available scale tone, with the same picking pattern. Put the two ideas together and start playing them two times each. We are going to keep going up.
Ex. 3 is based out of the 10th position and begins with a C on the 2nd string. Experiment with fingerings on each one of these. It helps to have a few different ways to come in and out of each escape route.
For Ex. 4, Ex. 5, and Ex. 6 we continue up the pentatonic scale. Learn how to visualize the scale that surrounds each fragment—it will help considerably when putting these into practice. Also, notice that Ex. 6 feels very familiar. It’s our original motif transposed up an octave.
Now it’s time to put everything we’ve learned so far together. In Ex. 7, I’ve written out a longer lick that connects each of our previous examples. As you can hear in the audio, I’ve taken liberties with the phrasing by ghosting some notes and palm-muting others. These come out naturally in my playing, but find the ideas and concepts that pop out in your playing and lean into them. That’s a major step in finding your own sound.
You’ve now made it through five different escape routes moving through five positions of the A minor pentatonic scale. In the heat of a gig you can pull any one of these out as a “repeater” that works up the crowd (think of all those fast licks in “Freebird”) or as a way to seamlessly transition to a different pentatonic box.
I altered our original motivic pattern for Ex. 8. I took our exact phrase from Ex. 1 and expanded it on the second repeat by reaching up and grabbing the A with my pinky. Yes, it’s a stretch, but it allows you to squeeze yet another variation out of this lick. Don’t worry, when you try this out with the previous licks it’s a bit easier since the frets are closer together.
Now, imagine you’re stepping out front to rip a dozen or so choruses on an over-caffeinated version of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” when you bust out Ex. 9, which is simply a “repeater” version of Ex. 8. And the crowd goes wild.
These have been heard in everything from Southern rock to metal and nearly everything in between. Make sure to practice these evenly with a metronome and experiment with them on other string sets and in other keys. Escaping from the box is something we all need to do at various points in our journey. Use this newfound freedom for good. You’ll be glad you did!
From crying pedal-steel sounds to aggressive, bluesy squeals, bending a string is all about feeling.
Chops: Intermediate
Theory: Intermediate
Lesson Overview:
• Learn to emulate the sound of the pedal steel guitar.
• Understand how to create chords using bends.
• Develop licks in the style of Roy Nichols and James Burton.
Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
Generally speaking, bending a string is about the bluesiest thing you can do on guitar. It’s all over the place now, but guys like T-Bone Walker were among the pioneers who really developed it into an expressive device. Even great old-school country guys like Grady Martin and Owen Bradley would likely credit their usage of bending to the older blues cats.
There are many styles of bending—every player does it differently. It’s the closest way to emulate the human voice with a guitar. Having said that, each bend truly has a unique nature of its own. But there are some conventional bends and patterns that you will find used across the board. One of those is demonstrated in Ex. 1. Licks like this are staples of country guitar. They’re absolutely essential.
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Roy Nichols and James Burton were among the first generation of country pickers to regularly include bending in their style. People did little half-step bends here and there, but not too many players went for that real in-your-face aggression. Bending the 3rd string was not really done all that much in country music before the Louisiana-born James Burton. A Burton-style bend would sound something like Ex. 2. The lick basically outlines a C7 chord.
Click here for Ex. 2
In Ex. 3 you can see an example of a Roy Nichols-style bend. Nichols was all about playing with notes “outside” the norm and wasn’t afraid to twist up the rhythm a bit, either. He was an essential part of the West Coast “Bakersfield” sound and one of my favorite players. The influence Burton and Nichols had on country guitar is immeasurable, but their use of bending is a good place to start listening.
Click here for Ex. 3
The crying sound of the pedal steel is synonymous with country music. Guitarists have been attempting to emulate the sound of a pedal steel for decades. In Ex. 4, you can see a very basic approach to copping the sound. Basically think of creating a triad and approaching a chord tone with a bend. After that, the possibilities are endless. Here, you’re creating a D major triad but pre-bending the E up to an F# (the major 3). Use your 4th finger to hold down the root (D) and 5 (A) on the 1st and 2nd strings, respectively.
Click here for Ex. 4
You can also emulate a steel guitar by bending single notes the way steelers do. In Ex. 5, we finger a series of second-inversion triads and then bend up to the top note from a whole-step below. This works great for ballads. But if you stray from the road less travelled, you can start to maybe sound like a steel. Or Jeff Beck!
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Ex. 6 is a lick that can be used on either a I or V chord. Here, you’re bending the 3rd string up a whole-step, bending the 2nd string up a half-step, and pre-bending the same interval to bring things back down. If you use your bridge pickup and pick between the neck pickup and the neck, you can get a very steel-like tone that’s similar to Don Helms or Kayton Roberts.
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The next lick (Ex. 7) works great for kicking off a tune in D. You’re pre-bending the major 7 up to the root in a relatively speedy manner. The bend needs to imitate a pedal moving a string up to a pre-determined note. It really shouldn’t be buttery smooth and full of vibrato like most bends played by guitarists we all know and love.
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I love bends—use them all the time. Players like Roy Buchanan, Jerry Garcia, Mike Bloomfield, and Clarence White all had unique ideas when it came to stretching strings. That’s what I try to take from them most. Emmylou Harris once said, “Style is only a product of your limitations.” An elegant and articulate style is the most important aspect of playing for me.
Clarence White’s influence comes out in Ex. 8. White’s use of the B-bender built into his Tele was an essential part of his electric playing. You would always hear him bend the 4 up to the 5 on the 2nd string while letting the top string ring out. To this day, it’s bad to the bone.
Click here for Ex. 8
The final lick (Ex. 9) is more of an aggressive Mike Bloomfield-type of deal. Very angry, but it still works with some smooth vibrato. The first half-step bend up to the 5 (E) is something I first heard from Roy Nichols, but I then discovered that Grady Martin and Hank Garland had used it as well. The half-step bend to the root on the 2nd string comes straight from Garcia. That’s simply his thing. The rest of the lick includes concepts I’ve concocted over the years. I’m a huge fan of finding bends that are head turning, but most importantly, musical.
Click here for Ex. 9
I hope you’ve learned a thing or two and have found some inspiration from this! Bending is what gives us a huge part of our musical voice as guitar players. I can’t over-emphasize how important it is to go back and listen to how great players approached bending. But most importantly, keep listening to how you’re doing it. The key here is to cultivate and nurture your own style.
Explore the timeless licks of such rock masters as Clapton, Hendrix, Iommi, and Page.
Chops: Beginner
Theory: Beginner
Lesson Overview:
• Learn how to use “repeater” licks to create mass hysteria.
• Understand the intricacies of the diddle-ee-bum.
• Increase your stash of face-melting rock licks.
Click here to download a printable PDF of this lesson's notation.
These licks are part of the language of rock. By mastering them, you’ll take control of them and then take control of your listener. If you use a stock lick in the usual way, you can make the listener comfortable with a sound they recognize. Modify it either tonally or rhythmically, and you can generate interest. Claim new melodic territory by eschewing it entirely. If you combine all three—the journey goes from mundane to spectacular. Here are 10 must-know rock phrases. Learn them. Love them.
Gone to Mississippi. Leslie West of Mountain had an amazing technique that used only two fingers on his left hand. Ex. 1 uses the E major pentatonic (E-F#-G#-B-C#) scale, and the heart of the lick is the bend on the 3rd string followed by the fretted note on the 2nd string. It is as pervasive as the comma in modern writing. If you shift the lick an eighth-note in either direction you’ll get other equally recognizable licks out of this device.
Click here for Ex. 1
The Black Room. Both Clapton and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi abused Ex. 2 equally. Very often it was drenched in wah-wah. The addition of a wah pedal played strictly on the beat will create the illusion of a lot more going on than there actually is. Try it and see. Don’t have a wah pedal? Go get one! If you were to play this lick as eighth-note triplets you will get a straighter version of it where the first note of the pattern is always on the beat—which is also a cliché.
Click here for Ex. 2
Diddle-ee-bum No. 1. The lick in Ex. 3, is as ubiquitous as the word “and.” A four-square repeater with no shifting accents—just power and attitude. I think Michael Schenker is the guy who brought me to the diddle-ee-bum and I’ve used it ever since. Played slowly, this lick can sound like straight 16th-notes, but when you get it up to tempo the first, third, and fourth notes of the pattern are accented to the point that you begin to hear it more as a triplet, with the hammered note crammed in between.
Click here for Ex. 3
Many Years After. Alvin Lee from Ten Years After and Ronnie Montrose made their bones on some awesome repeaters like this one in Ex. 4. When played as triplets, the G shifts from a weak beat to a strong beat within each appearance of the motif. The lick is equally effective when played as 16ths. Try it and see.
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Diddle-ee-bum No. 2. We shift Ex. 4 over to the next two strings and we have a whole new world of possibilities in Ex. 5. Look to Vivian Campbell’s “Rainbow in the Dark” solo for a great example of this. Getting it really fast and aggressive and in time is harder than you might think.
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Diddle-y Diddle-y. Very often, Ex. 6 is a novice player’s first “fast” lick. Take this lick as an opportunity to work on your pull-offs in order to keep them in time, in tune, and at an even volume. Single-string licks often create the possibility of hand-synchronization issues, so give this lick it’s proper due.
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Dab-a-da Dab-a-da. Jimmy Page! Ex. 7 is awesome just the way it is, either picked or played with pull-offs. It can also be played as 16th-notes, which creates a shifting accent.
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DO-be-da-do-BE-da-do-be-DA.Ex. 8 is a classic lick that goes all the way back to rockabilly. Very similar to Ex. 3 in the way the accent shifts, but here we are using a hammer-on, which makes it even more noticeable. Again, work with the metronome to make sure you’re playing the rhythm with real conviction—this is how you can get a hold of the listener and drag their ear into whatever comes next.
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House Burning Down. Jimi Hendrix! I’ll leave you with one from the master. Jimi is often heralded as being so far ahead of his time that he’s still ahead of our time. At the same time, a great deal of his vocabulary has become clichés. Yet, we don’t consider Jimi clichéd. And therein lies the rub. It’s five notes in the space of four 16th-notes, but we’re not notating it as a quintuplet because that would make this a jazz lesson. Burn it down!
Click here for Ex. 9
I was once working in a recording studio where Bruce Springsteen was doing mixes, so he was in and out of the studio twice a day checking the mixes and playing video games. He said the No. 1 thing you had to have when playing guitar was a “cool contortion”—a contorted facial expression that indicated how into the music you were and how hard you were working. For each of these licks, especially the repeaters, a cool contortion is a must-have. So practice in front of a mirror.