Hello everyone, and welcome to my new column for Guitar World! Over the course of these lessons, I will be demonstrating many of my approaches to blues rhythm guitar playing and soloing, covering a variety of my favorite styles of the blues along the way.
I’d like to start off with a blues lick that I love, one that I use all of the time and is “multi-functional,” in that it’s great for rhythm parts as well as soloing. Blues players often fall back into patterns: I always say that playing the blues isn’t about scales, such as the minor pentatonic scale, the blues scale, the Mixolydian mode and what have you. It’s not “scale-y” music; it’s pattern music. So you need to learn the right patterns in order to sound bluesy.
