I hope everyone had a Merry (and musical) Christmas. For those of you who found a guitar under the tree you may be wondering where to begin your music making journey. Most guitarists start with the open chords. Today's guitar lick is based around the open D and C add9 Major chords. The guitar lick is based on a repeating picking pattern you can see in the tab. The bass note changes from G to F to C with some hammer ons to spice up the lick a little bit. The lick ends with a major scale run based on the G Major scale.
A great way for any guitarist to learn some great open based chord licks and guitar runs is to study bluegrass players. Bluegrass is great because a lot of the runs are based around open position chords and lower position scale patterns that beginners often start out with - but they can be very technical, fast and precise so advanced players learn a lot too.
Today's guitar lick is a world guitar lick. It draws on rhytmic phrases typically found in so called world music. The tab is as close as I could get to the rhythm in the guitar video. Try creating your own phrasing with these notes and experiment with mixing these patterns to come up with your own musical lines.
Here is a guitar practice exercise that will help improve your alternate picking while crossing strings - called cross picking. Start slowly with a metronome. You can practice this guitar lick using a variety of rhythms. I would recommend triplets and eighth notes. Use alternate picking throughout.
Here is a single string guitar lick again based on the high E string. This guitar lick is based around the notes of the D major scale but with the use of the high E as a repeating pedal point lick you could consider this lick to be based on the E Dorian Mode. The lick begins on the B note at the seventh fret and continues down the neck using a descending sequence. The rhythm of the lick is 16th notes. All the notes are played with alternate picking. Once you get familiar with the guitar lick try concentrating on accenting the fretted note that starts each sequence.
Here are the single string guitar lick videos that match the tab in the last two posts. Both guitar licks are played using 16th notes and alternate picking on the high e string. The guitar tab for both licks is in the prior posts for today.
Here is another single string guitar lick played again on the high E string and using 16th notes. Guitar licks like these are great warm up exercises and can be a good addition to a guitar practice schedule.
Here is a guitar lick based on a 16th note rhythm played entirely on the high E string. Like our last guitar lick this one can be repeated and sounds good looped over a static rhythm pattern.
I love guitar licks that have a feel that they can be repeated ad infinitum. The best guitar licks in my opinion ( and musical licks in general) within this category are bebop licks especially as derived from the bebop scale. That is a bit of a digression though because today's guitar lick is a basic rock lick. It utilizes lots of open strings and is triplet based although the last note of each bar is held slightly longer. I apologize for the choppy audio quality my computer has decided to get a bit temperamental and seems to be working at a 50% capacity.
The minor pentatonic scale for metal, rock and blues guitarists is an essential 5 note scale that forms the foundation of most modern guitar music. Although it only has five notes it has been combined in many different ways to yield some amazing music. From blues and rock players like Hendrix and Vaughan to modern masters like Eric Johnson and Zakk Wylde the pentatonic scale has been the basis for many of their greatest guitar licks and solos. Today's guitar lick is comprised of a 5 note grouped sequence made up of notes from the A Minor Pentatonic scale.
This is a guitar lick using a sextuplet pattern. In this lick the guitar is tuned down a whole step. The pattern is based around a D shaped triad but here I move from the D chord at the 14th fret and instead play this a half step lower. I use alternate picking but this can also work with sweep picking if you are so inclined.
