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The licks on this page have been compiled by John Robson to show a cross section of the type of thing he regularly gets asked for in his lessons. They also give a good impression of what can be heard on his albums "Never Learned To Dance" & "Elbow Grease". Excerpts from these albums are available by going to the CDs page. John Robson has a limited number of vacancies for new students of all levels of ability. If you live in the Teesside area of the North East of England and would be interested in booking some lessons with an experienced professional guitar teacher, then go to the "BOOK A LESSON" page for more details. Meanwhile, here's the free licks. Just click on the TAB to hear the lick being played. You can also download FREE jam tracks to try the licks out over. Simply click on the track of your choice to download the mp3 music file. The chord sequence/tab for each jam track is available by clicking on the "tab" link for each track. It is strongly recommended that you take a look at the tab for each track before using them - especially in the case of the jazz tune. This lick uses the notes of The G major scale (G A B C D E & F#). It would be particularly effective in either an E Aeolian or A Dorian context. A lick using the A minor Pentatonic Scale (A C D E G). Watch out for the right hand taps (indicated by "T"). A sweep picked arpeggio starts this one off. Try to play the whole sweep with one flowing movement of the pick. The rest of the lick uses the A minor Pentatonic with an additional Eb passing note. Watch out for the tapped A note after the sweep. Another tapping lick, this time using the A Dorian Mode (A B C D E F# G) with the addition of Eb as a passing note. Each time you move to a new string, you should do so with a hammer-on using your 4th finger. A simple A minor arpeggio with the addition of chromatic "neighbour tones" - simply approach each chord note from a semitone below. A good old fashioned blues scale lick in the style of Gary Moore. Nothing unusual about this one, just aim for fluency & the speed will take care of itself. Another lick using the G major scale. The main technique shown here is the use of "legato" - a smooth flowing sound created by repeated hammer-ons, pull-offs & slides. The tonality of this lick is based around Am, making it Dorian, but you could quite easily use it in other contexts without too much modification. Another Dorian lick. However, it could be used in a D Mixolydian or E Aeolian context by simply shifting the focus away from the final A note. Another Gary Moore "blues scale" lick. This is just the A minor Pentatonic scale with the addition of the Eb passing note. Once again, aim for fluency. A simple A minor Pentatonic lick using trill at the 12th fret. Follow the instructions & you should be OK. This lick (along with most of the other blues licks shown here) uses the combined scales of A major Pentatonic (A B C# E F#) and A minor Pentatonic (A C D E G). By adding these two scales together, you can access the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G) and the A Mixolydian Mode (A B C# D E F# G), which are also popular scales used in the blues. A BB King inspired lick using the A Mixolydian mode as it's basis. A major + A minor Pentatonics again. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Just watch out for that double bend at the start. A hybrid picking lick (pick & 3rd finger of right hand). The notes used are from both pentatonics & are arranged in 6ths. Once again, A minor + A major Pentatonic scales. The only other note here is the additional Eb passing note (8th fret, 3rd string).
An A minor Pentatonic lick with, once again, the addition of Eb as a passing note. Notice how the C notes are bent slightly towards C# (the major 3rd of an A or A7 chord - the most likely tonality to use the lick over). A Robben Ford inspired lick. This one uses the A Mixolydian mode as it's basis. A mixture of both A major & A minor Pentatonic scales again. The first part of the lick uses a chromatically descending shape. This type of thing is often found in country music. The 7th - 8th fret double string bend should be done with the flat of your 3rd finger. Yet another example of A minor + A major Pentatonic scales. Nothing here to worry about. Another A minor pentatonic lick. Once again, notice how the C notes have been bent up towards the C# - the major 3rd of A. A lick which can be used over any type of chord, this uses a technique known as "sonic shapes". The principle is that you take a repeating pattern (in this case; 1 fret + 2 frets) and repeat it across the strings. As long as you resolve it to a strong chord note, it will work over ANY chord. Both Eddie Van Halen and Alan Holdsworth have used similar ideas to this. A widely used scale in jazz is the Melodic Minor. Here you can see the 7th mode of Bb Melodic Minor (Bb C Db Eb F G A) being used over the A7#5 chord. When used in this context, the Melodic Minor Scale is known as the "Superlocrian Mode". This lick uses the principle of approaching a chord from it's 5th. In this case, the Am7 chord has been "approached" via E major. The E major arpeggio played over the top of Am is an idea dating back to Django Reinhardt. A II V I chord sequence (Am - D - G) is another opportunity to use the melodic minor scale. This time the scale being used is A Melodic Minor (A B C D E F# G#). The diminished scale is used here. This is a scale consisting of alternating tone & semitone intervals. Starting on a G, this gives: G A Bb C Db Eb E Gb. This is an ideal scale to use over any A7 C7 Eb7 or Gb7 chord. Due to the symmetrical nature of the scale, the same fingering will repeat every three frets on the guitar. Once again, the A Melodic Minor scale used over a II V I (Am - D - G) chord sequence. The Whole Tone Scale is exactly that: - a scale made up of whole tone (2 fret) intervals. Starting on an A note, you get A B C# D# F G. This is a great scale to use over any chord with a raised 5th (A7#5, or A+ for example). Just make sure that the root of the chord you're playing over is one of the notes in the scale you're using & you should be fine. This lick ends by hanging onto a 9th (E) of the underlying Dm7 chord. Similar in principle to Rock Lick No.5, this one simply uses chromatic "neighbour tones" to approach the notes of the underlying Am chord. Chromatic licks always sound exotic & jazzy, if done right. The secret is to ensure that you resolve to a strong chor d note (in this case, a C - the minor 3rd of the Am7 chord) when ending. Another Melodic Minor lick. This time we're using the 4th mode of E melodic minor (E F# G A B C# D#) to get something called the A Lydian Dominant Mode (A B C# D# E F# G). This scale is particularaly effective when soloing over static dominant 7th type chords. |
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