Blues Lead Guitar: Putting it all together #20of20 (Guitar Lesson BL-030) How to play

Justin's Completely Free, Blues Lead Guitar Lesson BL-030. Lesson 20.

In this guitar lesson you will learn how to put everything together.

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/BL-030-PuttingItTogether.php

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

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To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

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Have fun :)

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Okay, we've covered an awful lot of ground
in this little blues course.

It's really important that you practice the right things
to make the most of your practice time

and to make sure
that you really digest this information.

So, what should you be doing?

Well, the first thing that needs to go
into your practice schedule

is to learn the licks.

Of course you need to learn the scale positions as well :
they go around the licks

but definitely knowing the licks for each position
is really important.

So it's worth practicing each one up.

Really working on trying to make it sound good.

Not just getting the notes right

but thinking about how loud and soft
you pick the notes.

The whole dynamic feel of it,
whether you really give it some aggression,

or whether it's soft and delicate,
that kind of thing.

That makes a huge difference to the way
people can project through their playing.

So, learning your licks,
getting the licks down right,

is the first thing
that you should be worried about.

The next thing is making sure that you use them.

Now what I recommend for all of my students
is that you use a backing track.

Now, if you're lucky enough to be in a band
and you can practice using the licks with a band

then that's the best thing ever
but not everyone has that luxury,

so a backing track is a pretty close second.

Now, there's backing tracks available
from my site, including a couple of free ones,

so use those.
There's plenty around on the Internet

so just look about and find yourself
some backing tracks to jam to.

It's really important.

The ones that you'll get from my site
are 5 minute long,

which is a good amount of time
to practice one lick.

Now I did talk about this in an earlier lesson,
in Blues Lead Guitar, Volume One

but just to reiterate it here,
take one lick that I've given you

and use it as many different times,

as many different ways as you can
for a whole five minutes.

What you'll find is that after the first minute

you've used everyway
that you can possibly think of to play the lick.

And that way you'll start really pushing your boundaries
of the ways that you can use that lick.

It's also worth, within that five minutes,

maybe towards the last part of it,
the last minute or so,

linking up with some other licks
that you already know from that position.

So you can sit there and go from one lick
and then smoothly into another lick

and then back to the first lick or whatever.
Letting them blend.

Because what you don't want is to have:

Here's the licks that you've learned on this DVD
or from wherever else,

and when you play, it's got nothing to do
with that collection of licks.

You have to try and blend them
in to your playing

so that they naturally just come out
whenever you play your pentatonic.

That's kind of the point.

As well as doing that,
you might want to add to your playing schedule,

after you've done all of these individual licks
in individual positions

would be linking positions and practicing
moving from one place to another place

and using those slides to join them together
or shifts or using the same note.

A good idea is just to pick one specific thing
and practice that.

So, either practice moving from one position
to another position that's right next door

or, practice jumping from one end of the neck
to the other end of the neck

and back to the middle somewhere,
really jumping around a lot.

But really trying to find the thing,
it is that you're going to practice

and then work on that one thing
over and over.

Okay, now, the other really, really big question
that people have is

"You've taught me loads of stuff
about playing in the key of A

but I want to play in other keys too."

Actually, you have to play in other keys
and it's really, really important.

But the reason that I taught you
everything in the key of A is so that

you really start to understand each position.

Now, once you can play,
for example, position one.

You've learned your licks
in position one in the key of A

and you've done your homework
and you've really got it sounding good.

Now, if you want to move that to the key of C,
all you need to do is move the root note.

And this is why I keep going on all the time,
through all my lessons,

about the importance
of knowing which note is the root note.

Because all you have to do
is to move that root note to the note of your new key

and you've got your new scale.

For example, position one in A
was around the 5th fret.

If you wanted to play in C,

you simply move that whole bunch of stuff
up to the 8th fret

because the root note for the key of C is the note C,
8th fret, 6th string.

And then you can play
all of your position one licks.

You'll find that a little bit weird at first

because you've been playing so much
in the key of A.

So what you want to start again with
is just playing position one.

Get use to playing position one
in your new key.

When you feel confident with that,
maybe try going from position one up into position two,

back to position one, up to position two,
back to position one,

and start to see
that they kind of link together.

And because you've already done it
in the key of A

you will find it quite easy, I'm sure,
to link through all your different positions

if you've done your homework
in the key of A well enough.

Which I'm hoping you will have done.

Other things we need to talk about quickly :
new licks.

I've given you a bunch of licks
but Eric Clapton certainly didn't learn licks from a DVD

by some weird Tasmanian guy
who teaches via the Internet.

You learn licks from records.

The sooner you get transcribing
and listening to your favorite BB King

or Eric Clapton
or whoever you like's album

and trying to work out their licks.
That's what you should be doing.

That is the real way to learn to play blues guitar
and there's no substitute for it.

I've given you a really good course
that I think will help you on your way

but you need to transcribe things.

There's no question,
you must do that

if you want to end up being
even a competent guitar player,

(it) has to be transcribing stuff.

Now to help you with that, I have a product,
which I'm not saying you have to buy

you can be using your own CDs like Clapton CDs
or whatever if you like but I've got this thing,

this really useful blues solos pack
where I recorded five different solos

in the style of five different guitar players
and they progressively get harder

and they use a mixture of the different pentatonic scales
and they're full of licks.

I picked each guitar player's
(twenty, whatever) favorite licks

and then squashed them all into a new solo,
made a backing track and recorded it.

So I've made sure
they're pretty straight-forward to transcribe

and you get the tabs as well
so after you've transcribed it,

like worked it out by ear yourself,
you can then check it against my transcription

and make sure that everything's okay.

So, that's a really, really important thing
that you do next is work on your own licks.

Mega, mega important.

One last thing, there is another note
that you will find crops up quite a lot in blues,

In the key of A, this is the note C#.

And the reason this note is there
is because it comes from an A7 chord.

but whenever you use that note particularly,
it only fits over the A7 chord

and in a blues, hopefully
you remember that it's got the chords A, D and E.

Or A7, D7 and E7.

Any licks that use the note C#
only sound good over the A chord.

So the reason they're not covered here

is because these things,
they're called chord specific licks,

and they're going to get covered
in Advanced Blues Lead Guitar

which will be coming to you very soon.

So, don't stress about that.
If you want a quick snippet of what I'm talking about

you might like to check out a series of videos
on my web site called 'Jazz up your blues'

which talks about this concept a bit
and gives you an introduction to the use of arpeggios

which is a very cool thing to do.

Well I hope you've enjoyed this series
of blues lead guitar lessons.

Be it on the DVD or if you've watched it on Youtube
or through the web site.

I really hope that it helps expand your blues playing

and takes you to new, and cool, and hip places
that you never thought you'd go to before.

I've seen many of my private students
really progress

from being complete beginners
in the lead guitar department

to really doing
some pretty good quality solos.

It's all about the licks.

Okay, take care of yourselves,
and I will see you again for another lesson real soon.

Bye bye.