Between the Licks

Using the blues scale as our foundation, lets use some chord tones to color the house.

Pop-up instructional video to the left.

Today we'll be adding chord tones as color for our standard blues scale. We can find these chord tones by finding notes in the chord, which changes as the progression moves, that align closely to the blues scale.

Let's use an A blues progression. Simple three chords. As the foundation we'll use the A blues scale. The chord tones will be derived from the A7, D7, and E7 in the progression.

Licks for an A7 chord

First, let's look at the notes in an A7: A, C#, E, and G. Notice that only one note lies outside of the blues scale. The C# is right next to the C from the blues scale. These notes imply the major or minor tonality. With a C#, it sounds major, with a C, it sounds minor. Lets play with that.

This first lick uses a popular double-stop method of playing two notes at once. You should notice how both the C and the C# are used in the first set of double stops. This little ditty is great for jamming.

This second lick is also pretty cool. This little lick is to showcase how you can step outside of the pentatonic or blues scale and still have a cool sounding lick. The idea is to use them as passing tones, or notes that aren't sat on.

The third lick outlines the 5th and the b7th at first. This is a great shape that fits into the chord AND the blues scale. Its perfect. Watch out for that chromatic drop, its a few pull-offs and then a slide to the 5th fret before the last few notes. 

This forth lick uses fragments of an A7 chord at the beginning before opening out into a nice and held out major 3rd and b7th at the end.

The fifth and final lick for the A7 chord is based off of a double stop type of concept. Because of the awkward timing, its not a super useful lick but the concepts behind the double stops are very useful.

Playing licks over the D7

Here are two quick licks for use over the D7 or IV chord of a progression. They contain some of the basic ideas like returning to the root of the progression in the lead and outlining the extra note (in this case a F#, or D7's third).

This first lick takes the 5th and the b7th of the D7 and plays with them a bit at the beginning. It finally gets into the 3rd before bending the 6th up to the b7th and finishes with the root of A7.

This second lick takes a lot from the previous lick. See if you can spot the similarities (hint: the b7th at the beginning, the final bend on the 6th up to the b7th and coming to an end with the root of A7 are all adequate answers).

I know you eagerly await part two...

It will of course contain more licks to choose from when it comes to playing a blues progression in A. Stay tuned!

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