4 Intermediate Blues Licks

Something important to keep in mind is that by learning these 4 licks, we’re helping you become more aware of the 12 bar structure happening underneath your playing! The more confident you are with the 12 bar blues structure, the better your solos will sound, so let’s get started!

The Audio Files

As you learn the licks, if you would like to try them along with the backing track, you can find them below. We have the full backing track, a slower version and audio of the solo if you want to listen to it again in context. Enjoy!

First Lick

The first lick is played over chord I of our blues in A, which would be an A7. We’re going to use a “blend” of A minor and A major pentatonic, in the same hand position.

That means you’d be playing over A minor pentatonic box 1 (starting on fret 5):

And A major pentatonic box 2 (also starting on fret 5!):

We’re stacking both box shapes in one hand position so we can blend them and play with the different colours of each scale.

We’re also playing a pretty cool quarter tone bend on that lick, feel free to have a look at this lesson if you’re struggling with this concept!

When practicing this first lick, make sure you start on the “and” of beat 1. Follow along with Dan and you’ll be fine!

Second Lick

The second lick is still played over our chord I. We’re still using major and minor pentatonic, but this time with a bit more emphasis on minor. To do that, we’re going to travel to shape 2 of A minor pentatonic to get an almost Clapton like vibe.

Something you should start doing is thinking in terms of intervals rather than fret numbers if you can! That will allow you to be able to transpose these licks in any key much more easily, but also to be really conscious of the function of each note you’re playing in a much clearer way.

Third Lick

On the third lick, we’re now playing over chord IV, which would be D7 in our key.

There are a few different ways to think about what scale we’re playing. We could still think in terms of where we are in relation to A, or we could think of D as our “new key”. Ultimately, you’d be playing the same notes, and if you want to dig deeper into that, check our course material!

The easiest way to get started is probably to think of the same thing we were playing over our A (chord I) but now transposed to our D (chord IV).

So you’d now stack shapes 1 and 2, but this time on fret 10 to be in the key of D. Doing that, you’re now playing over the D minor and D major pentatonic scale.

Fourth Lick

On lick number four, we’re playing over the part of the 12 bar blues where we play chord V down to IV. That means this lick is written specifically for this part of the blues and won’t sound as good anywhere else.

The concept is still the same, we’re going to mix E major and E minor pentatonic over the E chord, before moving down to D minor/major that we practiced on the previous lick.

Think of it this way: if all we have to do to go from chord V to chord IV is drop the same chord shape down a tone, then we can do the same thing when improvising over these two chords, and drop our scale or lick down a tone!

Doing that, we’re following the movement of the chord progression, which will definitely help you sound more like you’re playing a solo just for that part of the structure, instead of a solo that could work anywhere, without really highlighting which chord you’re on.

We then finish off with a nice little move up the A major pentatonic scale, from shape 4 to 5, finishing on shape 1!

In Conclusion

As you can see, the placement of these licks is crucial, but learning them will definitely help you understand how to play the changes more confidently on any 12 bar blues. Feel free to experiment with them to make them your own!