2 Cool Blues Riffs
I know how much you all like riffs, so I’m hoping you’re gonna like these two as much as I do.
The first riff is basically working off the fourths you find in the pentatonic minor scale. You’re essentially doing mini bars with your fingers… just grabbing two strings at a time though.
Feel free to have fun with this… mix up the order, experiment with hammer-ons and pull offs, and even with the open notes I mentioned. If you look at your Am Pentatonic, you’ll see that E, A, D, G are all in that scale -- so that means that you can use those as open notes as well, even when you’re playing from the fifth fret.
I talk about the fourths and fifths and other intervals a lot more over at Guitar Scale Patterns.
The second riff also uses fourths… this time on the top two strings. Adding a string bend makes it sound really cool.
Enjoy….
If you need a refresher, click here for the pentatonic scale lesson.
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ROCK ON,COOL RIFFS.HEY IF YOU GET A CHANCE YOU THINK YOU CHOULD SHOOT ME ONE OF THOSE CHEAT SHEETS,I SINGED UP BUT NEVER GOT THANKS, AFTER CHRISTMAS I AM GOING TO GET OFF THE FENCE AND ORDER THE I,IV,V LESSON
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Hey Don – sent you an email. Cheers… J.
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why don’t you put the tabs for some of these cool licks you send to us . that way we have something to study by . thanks buck
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Great stuff easy to understand Thanks
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Jon,
Could you please throw in a few country riffs every now and then? A lot of those are pretty close to blues anyway! Keep up the good work!
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I’m getting much better at soloing, however, I still can’t play the actual melody of a song. Is there an easy way to find the actual melody notes of a song? I can noodle around forever even on simple tunes and never get it quite right.
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Hi Jerry,
Hmm, well you could try slowing the song down, that might help you really identify the exact notes… you can try using something like this software: http://www.GuitarRiffMaster.com
Other than that, I don’t really have any tricks up my sleeve for that kind of thing.
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