Signature licks and solos
Imagine BB King, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Albert Collins and Jeff Beck soloing on the same track. Learn 20 licks & five style studies.
We guitarists love to jam, and blues royalty is no different, so we’ve conjured up an All-Star jam session featuring five superstars of the blues and beyond. This feature brings you an in-depth look at the soloing style of five of the greatest bluesy guitarist of all time: BB King, Eric Clapton, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy and Jeff Beck, all legends in their own right and hopefully needing no introduction.
While it’s clear that each of these players has his own unique and highly individual musical personality (Clapton and Beck both in and out of the pure blues idiom), it’s good to observe the huge amount of crossover in terms of note selection, shared expressive devices, common rhythmic devices and phrasing considerations. They’re definitely all communicating in the same stylistic language, with a shared vocabulary of musical ideas but with enough differences in technical approach, tone, dynamic delivery, touch and feel to really set each player apart. The lineage of influence in blues is absolutely crucial so you should devote a portion of your listening study to tracing this chain of tradition right back to where it started.
We begin with a pair of signature phrases for each of our five chosen artists over the
BUDDY GUY WAS TO ME WHAT ELVIS WAS FOR OTHERS. HE REALLY CHANGED THE COURSE OF ROCK AND ROLL BLUES Eric Clapton
four-bar turnaround and then the subsequent first four bars of a medium tempo quickchange shuffle in the key of G. The phrases are reasonably self-explanatory, although there are some idiosyncratic techniques and approaches to be aware of, outlined in accompanying text for each idea.
We up the tempo a little for our final collection of five complete 12-bar solos, a chorus for each artist around a quick-change blues, once again in the key of G. Again, there’s nothing too tricky here in terms of note content, with all solos predominantly coming from a combination of Major Pentatonic (R-2-3-5-6) and Minor Pentatonic scales
bb7),
(R- 4-5- along with the associated
Bb, arpeggios (G7: G-B-D-F, C7: C-E-G- and D7: D-F#-A-C). The complexity here is with the rhythmic phrasing, note placement and punctuation, along with the dynamic expression and pitch articulation, so work closely with a combination of the notation along with the associated audio.
There’s such a lot to gain from learning any one of these licks or solos in its entirety and taking the time to capture the detail and the nuance present within each player’s style study, although of course you’d probably never attempt to replicate a complete memorised chorus at a jam session.
It’s also a good idea when learning a longer solo, spanning a chorus or two, to study the shape overall, notice when and where any rests occur, when the dynamics peak and what range of notes is used. This can have just as pronounced an influence on your playing style as any actual licks played. The idea is that in time each idea, phrase, rhythm and expressive device you learn will leave an indelible trace, subconsciously informing your choices when you improvise. Your playing will of course be inspired by the musicians you like (as indeed was so for Messrs King, Collins, Guy, Clapton and Beck), but with your own unique musical personality shining through.
And remember, they say that stealing from one person is plagiarism, but stealing from many is research. Enjoy your research!
With the exception of BB King, the other artists here mostly favour single-coil Fenders. You’ll need a floating vibrato bridge to achieve anything close to Jeff Beck’s slide and harmonica emulations, but for everything else whatever guitar you have to hand will do nicely. These settings will serve as a basis for all tones, adding more or less gain as you desire or perhaps adding a good overdrive pedal to push the amp just that little bit harder.
TRACK RECORD Check out all of these players at various points throughout their careers, but if you like to do your listening ‘old school’, try the following album releases: BB King - Live In Cook County Jail (1970), Eric Clapton – From The Cradle (1994), Albert Collins – Live 1992-93 (1995), Buddy Guy – Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues (2004), Jeff Beck – Live At Ronnie Scott’s (2015). Every album is a gem from a legend.