"Walking the Shred/Blues Line" -Drew Peterson The most beautiful thing about blues licks is that you can really use them just about anywhere. Depending on how you relate them to the chord progression, how you phrase them, your tone, and how drunk you or your audience is, you can make a blues lick work, at least to a certian extent, in almost any context. However, for pure "jaw-dropping" effect, blues licks rank a bit low. True you can lay down a nice B.B. King lick and then fire off a Vai-inspired scale run, butI think it's a lot more fun when playing shred to take a blues lick and spice it up a bit, using the basic moves or harmonic foundations combined with shred technique to come up with a blistering lick that still captures the essence of the lick you started from. To really understand what i'm talking about, however, it's probably easier to start theother way, taking apart a bluesy shred lick. For example, the line Satriani plays at the beginning of the outro to "Surfing With the Alien" below; G C G etc... |-7p3-7p3---7p3---7p3-7p3---7p3---7p3-6p3---6p3---6p3-6p3---6p3---6p3-7p3---| |---------6-----6---------6-----6---------5-----5---------5-----5---------6-| |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| This is a bit (ok, a lot) too fast to be used in most blues playing, but the important thing here is the note choice- He's playing a B, a G, and an F against a G chord, suggesting G7 (B is the major 3rd and F is the minor 7th in the key of G) and a Bb, G, and E against the C, suggesting C7(Bb is the minor 7th, G is the 5th, and E is the major 3rd; the C is stated by the rhythm guitar and bass). You can't really take it at this speed in a slow blues (unless you build up to it gradually, in which case it's fair game), but you can graft its harmonic motion into a slower lick with some pretty dramatic results. I transposed it up to A so you could use open strings to suggest the chord changes underneith this one- i put them in parenthesies, so if you can finger pick them while playing the lick, do so; if not, just pretend they're not there. :o) Also, the ending comes from a clapton lick we're be playing with later on- read down a bit for an explanation of that move. A7 D7 A7 |----------5--9----------8----------| |---8b9.5--------7b8.5------5-------| |---------------------------5h6-----| |---------------(0)-------------7~~-| |--(0)----------------------(0)-----| |-----------------------------------| Still pretty stretchy, but sounds more like blues and less like B.B King doing speed. ;o) The half-step bends are a cool addition; rather than a straight unison bend where you bend up to the pitch of a fretted note, you bend to slightly below it, giving you a strong resolution when you play the note right above it. Alternately, you could use this as part of a turnaround: D7 A7 E7 |-9--5------8--8-5~~---------------| |------8\7-------5~~---------------| |--------------------7b9rp5--------| |(0)------------------------7-6~~--| |---------------(0)----------------| |----------------------------(0)---| Note how the "shapes" from the satriani lick are the same as the "shapes" in the more traditional one above. Also, note the half-step shift from the A to the G# at the end- moving from the root of a to the major 3rd of E7. Half step shifts to out-of-scale chord tones are an extremely dramatic blues move that can be a lot of fun to play with- in fact, if you look at the original satriani lick, you can see that's the principle this is working on- two half step shifts from B to Bb and F to E. * * * Now on to firing up your normal blues licks. This one's a classic; A |-------5---------------| |-----5---8p5---5-------| |-5h6---------7-5h6-----| |-------------------7~--| |-----------------------| |-----------------------| This is taken note-for-note from Clapton's "Crossroads," in the turnaround in the intro heading towards the E chord. He plays it as straight 16th notes, with the 2nd "5h6" getting an 8th noteon the 6th fret, and the resolving A getting as much time as it needs before he diecides to play something else. however, i like how it sounds when you pause on the 7th fret, G string for a bit (an 8th note, i believe) and ending with straight 16th notes for the hit-on move at the end- gives it more of a "swing" blues feel. Do whatever works for you. Harmonically, the cool thing here is the minor third to major third move- the hit-on from the 5th to 6th fret on the G string. Blurring the lines betwee minor and major like this is one of the principle tricks behind the "blues" sound. So, let's grab on to that idea of a b3-3 shift. In the key of A, that gives you the pitches C and C3, which are on the 8th and 9th frets of the high E string. As an A is several frets down, at the 5th fret, this looks like it might be a good place to do some tapping, especially since on the string below we have the root, 5th, and minor 7th; basically you can tap all the notes of a A7 arpeggio quite comfortably across two strings. And if we apply the same harmonic shift that Satriani uses in the "Surfing" lick we deconstructed above, you can also get a D7 arpeggio (with an added 4th)by moving two of the notes two frets down. So, try this; A7 D7 T T T T T T T T |--------9p5h8--------9p5h8-------8p5h7-------8p5h7-| |-10p5h8-------10p5h8-------8p5h7-------8p5h7-------| |---------------------------------------------------| |---------------------------------------------------| |---------------------------------------------------| |---------------------------------------------------| You suggest the 7th tonality on the B string, and althernate between the major and minor third on the E string while pedaling off an A note over the A7 chord, while over the D7 yousuggest the 7th tonality with the 5th and minor 7th on the E string, and pedal off the 5th while alternating between the major 3rd and the 4th (it's possible to go to the minor 3rd, but the fingering's a bit weird, and i prefer the sound of the 4th in the context of the lick anyway (after all, your ear has to be the ultimate judge here.) And the whole time, you're doing it with a blizard of tapped notes. Pretty cool, huh? Do a few of these on your own; they're good in that they really force you to think in terms of harmony rather than scales while you're shredding, and the end results can sound quite cool. Enjoy. :o)