How to sound like Albert King

Hello good people of the internet, my name is Jed and I'm here to show you one of my favourite blues licks from one of my favourite players… Mr Albert King! Alongside the lick, I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to help you sound and play like the great man himself! So first up, here's the lick:

As we work through this lesson, be sure to watch the entire video as there is nothing quite as good as listening to the sounds you are trying to create!

Getting the tone

The first thing to look at, is the way Albert King plays with his fingers. There is an element added when you play with your fingers which is "meatier" and gives you a little more tone than with a pick. This is a crucial part of his sound, and something that can't quite be reproduced the same way with a pick. Have you ever tried working without a pick? This lick could be a great place to start!

In terms of getting the sound with gear, well, Albert was straight from guitar to cranked amp! From our point of view, it will be almost impossible to play a Fender style tube amp at the kind of volume he would play at. Instead we can use a clean amp at a reasonable volume and put an overdrive pedal in front of it. There are hundreds of overdrive pedals to choose from, but some kind of tube screamer will do the job for you!

Finally, we can learn to use the volume control to manipulate this tone. The more you roll down the volume the less gain you will hear. In fact, by the time you are down to 2 or 3 on the volume knob, you'll have an almost completely clean tone. Then, when you want to give it something extra, crank that volume to 10 and all that creamy gain will come rushing back to blow people's minds!

Working with the lick

As a quick reminder, here is the lick we are working with:

Let's quickly talk about the theory of this lick. We're in the key of G blues, and we're mainly based in the G major pentatonic scale. We are, however, using a note from the minor pentatonic that we will call the minor 7th. This is a very common crossover of sounds in the blues, and we have a full blog post on it right here. here's a cool diagram to help you visualise these notes for this lick:

Once you've learnt the notes of the lick, it's time to start applying it like Albert King. From about 07:00 minutes into the video you will see Jed play around with this lick to get the most out of it. Note how he's messing around with the phrasing, messing around with the point in the 12 bar to play it and a whole lot more. You can take the core lick and manipulate to work for you, but like many things on the guitar, this is a skill to be trained.

Noodling

There is a huge amount to be said for just allowing yourself to play. Once you roughly have the lick under your belt, pop a blues jam track on and have some fun with it. Explore the notes, build it into your other licks and ideas and just allow your fingers to explore the fretboard.

You can even take the lick down another octave if you wish! This is the process of putting the lick into a different box and playing it there instead! I love doing this in my playing! Here's an example of that lick in a different octave: