The Dan Thorpe Acoustic Academy
June 2022 – Week 4
Starting Blues Lead Guitar
The Four Note Mini-Scale
I often find too many students learn too many scales without knowing what to do with them. Let’s flip that on its head. Here we will learn a four-note scale and play lots of fun blues ideas with it. Watch this first lesson for an introduction to this fun concept…
Part 2 – Playing simple licks
In this video, I show you some very simple licks to get you going. Although fairly easy, you will still want to take your time with these. Remember, it’s not how many notes you play, but what you do with them that counts. The great B.B. King was a master of this…
Part 3 – The Rapid-Fire Flurry!
Now then, let’s take it a step further. Here, we introduce the “blues” note which, for this shape, is fret 6 on the high E string. It adds more flavour, and you can play this type of lick slow or fast. Give it a go, either picking all the notes or using “legato”, (meaning hammer-ons and pull-offs). Finally, I play a few exciting little licks to hopefully inspire you to create your own ideas beyond this lesson…
Do leave a comment below and share your thoughts on this lesson. Most of all, enjoy! And if you like, you can jam with this track below…
CooL!
🙂
I love the blues and this has been a fun set of lessons Dan! Looking forward to revisiting these lessons along with the other blues lessons!! Cheers!
Great stuff, Logan. As guitarists I think the blues is pretty special. Will definitely do some lessons here and there on this style, and got some cool ideas going forward. Glad you enjoy this. 🙂
where have you put the rig that you play in video one? ie the one you play on your backing track.
Not 100% sure I get you, John, but I used my RP1000 by Digitech which is a guitar multi FX pedal. It has a built in looper, and I had it on the floor in front of me for this lesson to create the backing track. Hope that answers your question 🙂
Not really, you started the lesson with a sort of blues based riff, 30 seconds in and said “hopefully you can already play this” and then did some strumming. you then said more about this later , but I can’t do that bit and wondered where i will find it.
Oh, I get you now, John. You can access that HERE It is the blues mini course. Hope you enjoy it. 🙂
Looking forward to more lessons like this.
Good stuff, I will create them for sure. Are you thinking blues lead, or small scales to create melodies, or both? 🙂
Fun little session of the blues. Enjoyed this lesson.
Glad to hear it, Allan! Gotta love the blues. 🙂
Excellent. Really like this lesson and the tips you give. Will try this out first on my acoustic and then on my electric. Thanks, Dan.
Ace. Glad you enjoyed it. Love playing blues too. Hopefully this lesson will help you have a blast playing it! 🙂
wow, really enjoyed this lesson, will be visiting this lesson again! That backing track was awesome it really gives us a chance to play around with it.
Great stuff, pleased to hear it. It is good fun. Can do more on this sort of thing along with creating more backing tracks too. 🙂