3 Chromatic Blues Licks in E

There's nothing like a good 12 bar blues to let you throw in a few blues licks while you're jamming around, but the actual rhythm part of the 12 bar is usually pretty easy to pickup. So, today I've got three blues licks for you to work on. Once you've got those nailed down, take them and start throwing them into your jam sessions, your favorite 12 bar, or whatever else strikes your fancy. The common denominator among these three licks is that they all have a bit of a chromatic flavor to them. If you're unfamiliar with some of the interval patterns demonstrated here, you should checkout my other lessons, starting with those on the guitar scales. You can also find other lessons on thirds in the Licks & Riffs section, and some explanation in the Guitar Theory section. Because these licks are chromatic, they're not found strictly within a particular scale pattern; however knowing your pentatonic minor and major scales will be useful here. Essentially, we're working off the E pentatonic minor scale (open), and also getting up into the G major pentatonic as well. Once you've got those licks down, I always recommend working them over with some jam tracks to really get them down pat. You can find a great collection of jam tracks here.

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