Tag: pentatonic

Fast Pentatonic Pattern Lick (Guitar Lesson)

Add this fast minor pentatonic pattern lick to your solos! Includes TAB, and a lot of detailed information on the picking. Download the lesson PDF here:

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About this video

In this video, you’ll learn a fast minor pentatonic lick in the key of B minor. This lick is built from a repeating sequence or pattern of notes from the B minor pentatonic. We’ll focus on the pattern in the lick, the picking pattern and I’ll give you some practice tips so you can start adding this in your own guitar solos.

Practice this lick slowly and pay attention to play it clean & steady. People like patterns in music, even non-musicians like hearing patterns, but to avoid sounding too formulaic, make sure you glue the patterns nicely together & look for a creative ending, that is perhaps a bit more melodic. Also, experiment with shifting the rhythm back & forth in the bar AND with filter-type effects like a WAH pedal. All these points are illustrated in the lesson video.

Jam Track

If you’re interested, I offer a high-quality version (CD-remaster) of this guitar jam track that you can use in your Youtube/Soundcloud/Instagram/Social media videos:

Gear
  • Guitar: Suhr Modern Pro HH
  • Amp: Fractal Audio Systems AX8
  • Mixed with plugins from Plugin Alliance

Blues Lick Lesson #06 (Major Pentatonic)

In blues lick lesson 06, you’ll learn how to play this tasty blues lick in E. This lick uses some interesting concepts, like the use of economy picking and right hand muting Recommended playing level: intermediate and up.

E major pentatonic

This is mostly an E major pentatonic blues lick that is used on the I-chord (first four bars of a 12-bar blues). In bar 2, I introduce the b3 (blue note) in a classic blues double stop. Bend the blue note a little bit for maximum effect. This double stop is heard a lot e.g. in the intro of older blues songs (even acoustic songs).

Blues Double Stop in E
Blues Double Stop in E
Concepts in this blues lick lesson

In blues lick lesson 06, you get the guitar tabs on screen, a detailed explanation of the picking technique and a variations for hybrid picking. Concepts that are present in this video

  • Right hand muting
  • Economy picking (mini downstroke sweeps)
  • Picking technique (alternate picking, hybrid picking), see PDF
  • E major pentatonic, E major blues and Using the flat 3d (blue note)
  • Grace notes, slides
Backing Track

E Blues shuffle backing track (115bpm) here.

Practice Tips

Practice this lick slowly first, then with the backing track on my channel. The feel of the blues lick is very important. You can transpose this lick to other keys as well. 

Gear

The guitar used is my a Gibson Les Paul Standard. The guitar has a full-bodied and very present sound in the bridge pickup. I like this sound a lot for medium overdriven lead tones in blues and blues rock. Everything is recorded through my pedalboard and the Fuchs Blackjack MkII.

👉 Check out my gear page on Thomann: gear-thomann.guitar-inspiration.com