All Tutorials
Tutorial

Abusing The Blues

Chris Feener
AdvancedBluesCool Riffs 5 lessons4m

Welcome back IGers! This month, I wanted to break down and analyze a few of my "go-to" licks within the blues scale. But before we do, let's expand our harmonic spectrum of the blues scale, to spice things up. First, let's play through the regular old blues scale with a #4. (As written in bar 1) Now, let's add some intervals: 2, #3, #7. This will give us a smoother, more chromatic tonality. We're basically combining the major, minor and blues scale into one. This scale will generally work over most blues progressions, so let's check out some cool licks implementing it.

Play
Unlock all 5 lessons Premium includes every lesson, tab and backing track on the site.
See Premium Plans

5 Lessons

  1. 1 0:23 Lesson Abusing The Blues - Introduction Welcome back IGers! This month, I wanted to break down and analyze a few of my "go-to" licks within the blues scale. But before we do, let's expand our harmonic spectrum of the blues scale, to spice things up... Tab Guitar Pro
  2. 2 0:49 Lesson · 1m Abusing The Blues - Lick 1 So this first lick is pretty "twisty" in that it highlights a fair portion of the first position A minor pentatonic scale while adding hints of the major third (C#) through out. This is a great mechanism for... Tab Guitar Pro
  3. 3 0:51 Lesson · 1m Abusing The Blues - Lick 2 In much the same descending motion, this lick makes use of the second and third position pentatonic scale. Again, be sure to keep an eye on the techniques involved and execute the lick as cleanly as possible. Tab Guitar Pro
  4. 4 0:43 Lesson · 1m Abusing The Blues - Lick 3 Lick 3 approaches the blues scale from an ascending perspective. With three notes per string, our intervals are spread up to six frets apart. The main "purpose" of this lick is to highlight the #4 (D#) in a... Tab Guitar Pro
  5. 5 0:53 Lesson · 1m Abusing The Blues - Lick 4 And last but not least, lick 4. This one is very "pentatonicy" in the sense that we see a ton of two-note-per-string-ness. Note the heavy use, again, of the major third interval (C#) on both the D and B... Tab Guitar Pro

More like this

Minor Blues Tom Quayle
Beginner-IntermediateBluesChords 7 lessons24m
Hi everyone! Welcome to this tutorial on the minor blues. The minor blues is much like our beloved standard blues in many ways. It contains 3 primary chords, is generally 12 bars long and doesn't follow our... Shell Voicings Tom Quayle
Beginner-IntermediateBluesChords 7 lessons22m
Hi there everyone and welcome to this tutorial on Shell Voicings. Shell voicings are chords which contain the minimum number of voices or notes required to outline a particular harmonic sound. In other words... Sweep Picking as a Tool Steve Hubbard
Intermediate-AdvancedFusionTechnique 8 lessons7m
Hi folks! The main goal behind this tutorial, is to give you a number of sweep related licks that may be a bit less typical, to what you would normally play. If you have been using this technique for years... Exploring the Sixth Martin Miller
Beginner-IntermediateBluesScalesImprovising 6 lessons7m
Welcome to another tutorial! This time we’ll be dealing with an interval called the sixth. Just to give you a brief theoretic explanation: an interval is the distance of the pitches of two notes. The sixth... Funky Blues Steve Hubbard
BeginnerBluesCool Riffs 5 lessons6m
Hey guys! This tutorial will focus on a beginner 'Funky Blues' riff, and will also include a modified example, as well as a short lead run! As mentioned in the above video, some techniques that may stand out... Blues Rock Etude Martin Miller
BeginnerBluesImprovising 4 lessons4m
Hey IG! This is the first installment of a three-part series on the good ol’ Blues. We’re going to take three steps, so each of the three tutorials will deal with a different type of blues, increasing in...
Browse all Blues lessons