5 Blues Licks For Beginners

The twelve bar blues is one of the best facilitators of our improvisation practice. It's a true arena of creativity, and in this blog post I'm going to give you 5 relatively simple blues licks to help get you started! Each lick works on a different skill that can spark more and more ideas, until you gradually have an array of awesome blues licks at your disposal when improvising.

The Lesson

When you're ready, check out the full video lesson below, using the rest of the page as a support to understand the theory and grab the tab for the licks. You can also download the jam track right here!

The Theory

This entire blues track is in the key of C blues, and we are using our pentatonic major and minor crossover. To get started, remember that the chords we are playing over will be C7 | F7 | C7 | C7 | F7 | F7 | C7 | C7 | G7 | F7 | C7 | G7. So it's a standard 12 bar blues structure!

The Major & Minor Crossover

For every single lick in this track we are using both the major and the minor pentatonic scale in C. We have a more detailed blog post on that here, but essentially you want to overlay the C major pentatonic box 2, with the C major pentatonic box 1. Try to visualise these two scale boxes, as shown below, and then put them together!

As you work through each lick, try to relate it to these boxes. That's an important step in being able to then use these licks in other situations.

The Tab

So, let's check out the full tab for the licks. For the purpose of the video, I have put the licks in a good order for the 12 bar blues, but you can be a lot more free in where you place these licks, as I talk about in the video when breaking down each lick separately. Let's work through one at a time here too:

Lick 1

This is a classic blues opener, and we make great use of the major and minor crossover here too. We start on the b3rd, hammering onto the major 3rd, before working up the C major pentatonic. We then switch to the minor pentatonic b3rd note to add some real spice to the lick!

Lick 2

This lick is specifically designed to move you from the IV (4th chord of F7) back to the I (root chord of C7) in the progression. This is because the target end note is the major 3rd of C7, making it a very cool, very sweet sound to land on. It can be used anytime you move from the fourth to the root chord.

Lick 3

Much like lick 2, this lick is used to deliver us from one chord to the next, but this time it's the I chord to the IV chord (C7 to the F7 in the key of C). Again, we're resolving the phrase on the major 3rd of the F7 (4 chord), which sounds super cool!

Lick 4

This lick has got a bit of a buddy guy feel to it, which I love! We're once again using the major pentatonic and mixing with the minor pentatonic notes towards the end. It's a classic blues shuffle trick, and one you can place almost anywhere in your 12 bar!

Lick 5

The final lick moves us slightly out of the minor pentatonic box 1, and over to minor pentatonic box 2. We also throw in that major 3rd (as we can now start getting used to a lot) on the high E string. There's a lot more energy and aggression with this lick too!

Summary

I would suggest for you to now work to get all the licks played along to this track in this order, but then take them individually and work with them for at least a whole month. This will ensure they truly get into your day to day playing, and you get to understand how the licks can work in a variety of contexts, and keys. Good luck, and have fun!