Play These Awesome Gritty Blues Guitar Licks To Develop Great Blues Lead Guitar Phrasing
Emotion To Any Guitar Lick
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In this article...
I show you easy ways to add more grit to your guitar phrasing and play pro-level blues lead guitar solos.
How?
We’ll begin by taking ordinary blues guitar licks...
And we’ll turn them into gritty blues guitar ideas that add fire and expression to your guitar solos.
The cool thing is...
You don’t need to be an advanced guitar player (or to play fast) to use these gritty blues guitar ideas in your guitar solos.
If you know a single blues lead guitar scale shape (such as the A minor pentatonic box) and can bend a string…
You can easily get the awesome gritty blues guitar sound that makes your lead guitar playing way more fun.
Emotion To Any Guitar Lick
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
To begin...
Watch this gritty blues guitar video and follow the simple steps to level-up the guitar phrasing of your guitar licks and guitar solos:
Now that you know the basics, let’s go deeper.
Here are 5 more blues lead guitar licks that help you get the gritty blues guitar sound that impresses everyone who hears you play:
Gritty Blues Guitar Playing Tip #1: Improve Your Vibrato
Vibrato is the heart and soul of all blues lead guitar (and it’s a key part of the gritty blues guitar playing ideas I laid out for you in the video above).
Here are the main elements to focus on to make your vibrato better:
- Speed and width - the faster the vibrato, the wider it ought to be to sound good and controlled. If the vibrato is fast and narrow, it sounds nervous and out-of-control.
Conversely, if the vibrato is slow and wide, it sounds like a series of slow bends and not like actual vibrato.
This video shows the difference between out-of-control vibrato and controlled vibrato, and how to find the best vibrato sound for your blues lead guitar licks and guitar solos: - Intonation - this refers to your ability to keep vibrato in tune. A common vibrato intonation mistake is not bringing the string all the way down (to the starting pitch) after bending the note. This ruins the sound of your gritty blues guitar licks and makes your guitar phrasing sound out of tune.
This video shows how bad this mistake sounds and what to do about it: - String noise control - this is a common blues lead guitar mistake (that can affect the sound of the gritty blues guitar licks I showed you).
String noise can come from either the higher strings or the lower strings.
Here are some of the best ways to mute string noise when you do vibrato (so you can play gritty blues guitar licks cleanly and expressively): - Timing - believe it or not, great blues lead guitar vibrato ought to have a rhythm, just like the notes in your blues lead guitar solos ought to have a rhythm. The bends of your vibrato create a rhythmic pulse that you can (and should) sync up in time with the music you are playing your blues lead guitar solos over.
The better you are at integrating these vibrato elements, the better your guitar phrasing will sound when you play guitar licks and guitar solos.
This guitar phrasing video shows you how to make your vibrato lock in time with the song you are playing your gritty blues guitar licks over.
Question: “Tom Hess, what about BB King’s vibrato? It was fast and narrow, but millions of people liked it!”
Answer: Let’s just say, I’d love to do blind study where we line up 1000 people and play for them a couple of clips of BB King’s vibrato and followed by the vibrato of someone like Yngwie, Paul Gilbert or Andy Larocque. Then we keep a tally of how many people prefer which kind of vibrato when the sound is not attached to the name of a player they claim to like. I bet the results will surprise most people.
Bonus tip: Don’t give up on vibrato too soon.
A common mistake I hear in my blues lead guitar students is that many of them only hold out their vibrato for a tiny fraction of a second.
This not only robs your blues lead guitar phrasing of the fire and emotion it could have…
But it also makes it harder to refine your vibrato and make your blues lead guitar licks sound truly great.
Challenge yourself to keep your vibrato going for at least 10-15 seconds as you practice your blues lead guitar phrasing, the way I show in this video:
Gritty Blues Guitar Playing Tip #2: Work On Your Pinch Harmonics
Pinch harmonics are a fantastic way to amplify the emotion of your gritty blues guitar licks.
Here are my top tips for making your pinch harmonics scream and improve your blues lead guitar phrasing in the process:
- Use the neck pick up on your guitar. On most guitars, this means to flick the pick up selector all the way to the bottom.
This gives a brighter thinner sound to your guitar phrasing that makes it easy to articulate pinch harmonics in your gritty blues guitar licks.
And if you typically use the neck pick up for a lot of your blues lead guitar licks, this means you need to practice switching between the pick ups (sometimes - mid lick). Your ability to do this is a skill, no different than your ability to bend strings, play scales or improvise lead guitar solos.
Question: “Tom Hess, what if I can’t easily switch between the neck and bridge pick ups while practicing my blues lead guitar phrasing?”
Answer: The issue has likely to do with your guitar. Many guitars are designed by people who have no idea how to play with great blues lead guitar phrasing. As such, they put the pick up switch in the worst possible place on the body of the guitar.
That’s why, when you are shopping around for a guitar, the position of the pick up selector ought to be one of your main criteria. - Make sure the tone and volume knobs on your guitar are ALL the way up. This makes it easy to play pinch harmonics even if you don’t have a lot of distortion.
- Articulate the harmonic by picking the note and then touching the string with your thumb. The motion comes from turning the wrist counterclockwise (as if you’re turning off the ignition in an older car).
Then, most importantly… - Don’t leave your thumb on the string you just picked. Move your thumb off the string to allow the harmonic to ring.
Finally… - Combine pinch harmonics with aggressive vibrato to emphasize the gritty blues guitar phrasing sound.
This guitar phrasing video shows you how to do pinch harmonics with ease when you practice your blues lead guitar licks:
Gritty Blues Guitar Playing Tip #3: Add Double Stops To Your Blues Lead Guitar Phrasing Practice.
And by ‘double stops’, I’m not talking about ‘unison bends’.
A unison bend, if you don’t know, is where you fret 2 notes on 2 strings that are a half step or a whole step apart… then you bend the lower note until it reaches the pitch of the higher one.
This sound does add some grittiness to your blues guitar phrasing for sure… but there are far better ways to use double stops to amplify the emotion of your blues lead guitar licks and guitar solos.
Here are some examples of these gritty blues guitar double stops:
Question: “Tom Hess, what if my guitar doesn’t have a floating bridge like the guitar you are using in your video above? Does that mean I won’t be able to do the double stops like you demonstrate?”
Answer: No. You can still play all the same lead guitar double stops and simply combine them with finger vibrato instead of the floating bridge vibrato.
Having a floating bridge simply gives you options for a slightly different vibrato sound.
Gritty Blues Guitar Playing Tip #4: Practice Advanced Blues Lead Guitar String Bend Variations.
Most guitar players do string bends the same way every time.
By that, I mean: the string bends are done at the same speed, at the same time and with the same articulation.
Problem is, this severely limits how expressive you can be when bending strings.
Watch this video to see many more advanced string bending variations (they are only ‘advanced’ because they are less common, not because they are hard to do) you can add to enhance the expression of your gritty blues guitar licks:
Question: “Tom Hess, what if I have a hard time even bending the strings in tune to begin with? What can I do to improve this area of my blues lead guitar phrasing?”
Answer: Practice playing the note you intend to bend into as an unbent note.
Then, after you get its sound into your ear, bend into it slowly from a half step or a whole step below.
Bend slowly enough until the sound of the bent note matches the note you just played.
Also (if possible) practice doing string bends on lighter gauge strings to make it easier to bend in tune.
Alternatively, do string bends that are only a half step wide (1 fret). This makes it much easier to reach the target note and get the technique down before you work up to bending wider intervals.
Gritty Blues Guitar Playing Tip #5: Create Guitar Phrasing Variations On your Blues Lead Guitar Licks
One of the best ways to level-up your guitar licks and guitar solos is to focus less on ‘what’ notes you play…
And more on HOW you play the notes (this is what ‘guitar phrasing’ is all about).
The secret to improving your guitar phrasing is in one world:
Refinement.
This is where you take the blues lead guitar licks (such as the gritty blues guitar ideas I showed you in this article)...
Then, vary how you phrase them, by:
- changing their rhythm
- changing the articulation of the notes (e.g. switching from picking to hammer ons and pull offs and/or slides)
- varying where (and how) you apply vibrato
- varying which notes you bend into (and how)
- playing some notes over the bar
- Using rubato (the way I show in this lead guitar video).
To see this process in action, watch this video:
Schedule 10-15 minutes per day to work on your phrasing. It’s the single fastest way to become a better blues lead guitar player and play guitar solos you’ll feel proud to call your own.
Now you know how to level-up your blues lead guitar phrasing, the next step is to get breakthroughs in the rest of your guitar playing (everything from your guitar technique to fretboard knowledge, musical creativity, rhythm playing and a lot more).
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