Preview of September Week One

We are gonna kick of September's Guitar Lick of the Day by looking at a solo rock guitar instrumental called "Ascending" that I'm working on. For the next five days I'll breakdown a section of the piece and as always provide tab to follow along. The piece is played with tapping and legato and entirely on the D string. Here is a video of the musical composition with and without a delay effect. I hope you enjoy this and hopefully it may encourage you to explore some basic tapping techniques.

If your really into tapping there are some amazing players who incorporate some multi-finger string crossing madness you should check out. Some of my favorite tappers are: Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme ( they just released a new album too!)
Joe Satriani
Eddie Van Halen

Blues Lick in A

A little blues guitar lick in A. Backing track used was 91 Shuffle in A from www.freejamtracks.com used with permission. You can download you own copy of the backing track and try out some blues guitar licks in the key of A.

Chromatic blues pentatonic scale guitar lick

This is a chromatic blues pentatonic scale lick in the key of E. It's played over backing track #93 E Smell that Funk - used with permission. You can download a free copy of this guitar and/or bass backing track from www.freejamtracks.com

This lick is fairly straight forward and is based around eighth and quarter note phrasing. For beginner and intermediate players I hope it provides a jumping off point to add a little chromatic spice to your 12 bar blues guitar soloing using the pentatonic or blues scales.

Rock Guitar Pentatonic Scale Tapping Lick

Today's guitar lick is a tapping lick that uses notes from the E Minor Pentatonic scale. It is played over a backing track from www.freejamtracks.com used with permission. You can download your own guitar backing track from the site. This example uses track #105 E Metal Mayhem. Note the the guitar lick taps the first A note ate the 17th fret in the lick but then hammers the A note the second time it is played.

Rock Guitar tapping lick

Today's guitar lick is a legato lick that uses tapping and sliding along with hammer on and pull offs. There is no picking at all on this lick.

Drop C Rock Guitar Lick

Ok Olympics are over so things are getting back to normal. The first lick to kick things back into gear is a basic repeating rock guitar riff using Drop C tuning down a whole step. So the Guitar is tuned from low to high C,G,C,F,A,D. I went a little overboard on the distortion settings so both the C notes on the 6th and 5th strings tended to bleed into each other. You might want to experiment with a bit less distortion and maybe a bit of palm muting for more definition in the lick.

help the olypmics ate my brain!

Ok not really but I've been caught up in the spirit of the Olympic games ( and the late night viewing) and decided to take a break for the duration of the games. Those of you not as enamored with amateur sport and looking for some neat guitar licks to pass the time are encouraged to go back though some guitar lick of the day posts you may have missed, or if your anything like me forgot. Best of luck to your respective countries here is wishing the world a safe, exciting, competitive Olympics.

In the interim feel free to leave a message with requests or questions.

P.S. Many longer events such as soccer and field hockey are great to combine with some guitar exercises while watching the events.

Metal Guitar Riff Drop D Tuning

Today we look at a metal guitar riff and lick in drop D tuning. The lick is composed of chromatic sextuplets. This is similar but much more simplified and slower idea in the style of Zakk Wylde with Black Label Society.

Alternate Picking Guitar Exercise

Here is a little alternate picking guitar lick that is based on a six note sextuplet pattern played primarily on the B string. The open B string acts as a pedal point. To experiment with this lick a little try different delay settings and see what happens.

Jazz Blues Guitar Lick in F#

Here's a jazz blues guitar lick in F# for you. Coming from a blues background I really have limited experience with jazz guitar so I approached this with a F# Minor pentatonic scale position and just used my ears to figure out what chromatic licks could spice up the good old minor pentatonic scale. You can download the guitar backing track at www.freejamtracks.com The track used was 97- F# Jazz Hack on the loose - used with permission. An appropriate title. My two favorite players in the jazz blues genre are Grant Green and Kenny Burrell. For some great licks by two legends make sure to check out there playing.

Modern Rock Guitar Lick in D

Today's guitar lick is a modern rock guitar lick that uses legato. It's in the Key of D. You can download a backing track for this lick at www.freejamtracks.com. The guitar backing track used in this example was 85 D EVH Rocks the World( or 86 D with no bass as heard here)used with permission.

Texas Blues Guitar Lick

Here's a little Texas Blues Guitar Lick for you. Guitar in this example is tuned down a half step. You can download the backing track and play along. The backing tracks for this guitar lick is 25 - Eb Medium Texas Thang it is from www.freejamtracks.com - used with permission.

The lick and example improv following it are based around the E Minor Pentatonic Scale. If you find this lick too easy or boring the King of this style of playing is Stevie Ray Vaughan. A great place to start with the study of his playing is "Pride and Joy".

Descending Chord Progression

This is a little descending chromatic chord progression I came up with after checking out a lesson from Acoustic Guitar Magazine. It decends though D to C#,C then B. The underlying chord shape starts as a full D then moves into a partial G chord.