Techniques
Review these techniques.
Learn one and try to apply it where you can to explore where and how it works best (for you)
Hammer-on
Trills
Bending
Slide into the same
slide in and out
BB King slide
Advanced
double stop bend (first bend in this exercise)
Pre-bend
Vibrato hand style
Unison bend
Double stop bend
Fancyness
Blues curl
Blues vibrato
Bending vibrato
legato hammer-on
slide bends
finger rolling
tremolo picking
Double stop Embellishments technique
“Double stop with hammer-on”
This is the technique we discussed that I didn’t see in your soloing a lot.
hammer on upper of 2 strings
D|--5h7--5h7--5h7--
A|--5---5---5---5--
lower string of the 2 (common for Hendrix)
A|--5-----5-----5----
D|--5h7--5h7--5h7--
Lick writing exercises
Try to come up with 3 to 5 licks for every exercise, with or without the “challenge”.
Write these down on tab paper. This is the start of a lick library from which you can source to build phrases.
Challenge your creativity by applying the constraints offered by these exercises. They need you to be creative with you you play the notes instead just noodling single, regularly picked notes.
A lick is usually only 4 to 8 notes long, so feel free to write up phrases of 4 to 10 à 12 notes if you come up with a cool idea. Longer sequences will sound to pre-made when repating too much live
Your backing tracks can serve as accompanyment. Feel free to seek out your own backing tracks (with guitar in different keys) and drum only.
The boxes shown are all based on A minor pentatonic. Staying it that key for sake of the exercise with make your licks ‘fit together’.
Remember, this is all in function to create your own licks which you put together to your OWN solophrasing. Steal licks from other guitarist, get inspiration from their ideas but create your own phrases with them do develop *your* language
Exercise 1
Limit yourself to the “BB king box” or “blues house” for the first exercise.
try to vary in licks where you start, land on the root (or none of both)
Feel free to do a bit of small sliding in the “blues box”, like in this exercise
Challenge:
pre-bends, slide into notes
Exercise 2
Same idea, but se to the half of the 2 combined shapes.
challenge:
legato playing combined with slide, double-stop
Exercise 3
A small box. Try getting the most out of it, also by jumping from to to bottom string on the little box.
challenge:
dyad embellishments
Exercise 4
a true limitations, the challenge here is to try as many techniques in your toolbox to be creative. don’t forget motifs and other phrasing ideas as well
Exercise 5
Challenge yourself in the lower part, make sure you do’t slip of the edge 😉
challenge:
tremolo picking
Exercise 6
The original “shape 1”. Come up with licks that combine at least 3 techniques from the list above per lick
Exercise 7 – 12
Have a go with these other boxes, trying to use 2 to 4 techniques per lick
