Blues Licks & Riffs

In this lesson you will learn 15 cool Blues licks. Each lick is presented with minimal talking, so you can get right into learning and applying these licks into your own playing

In this series, I break down how to create a blues song using my ABC approach. A stands for accompaniments and style, B is Building a Solo and C is chords and progressions. This part 1 will cover parts A and B.

In this second part, we are going to cover how to create your own blues composition in four different styles: Shuffle, Swing, Rock and Stride. This lesson makes it easy to create a blues composition that will have a clear structure which you can then easily improvise over. We will also cover an introduction and ending for all four styles of blues that we covered.

In this lesson you'll learn how to create several advanced-sounding Otis Spann licks. Each lick is broken down and taught step-by-step.

In this lesson we will cover part of Gene Harris's grooves that he plays on "Lady Be Good." I will show you 5 of Gene's fills and his intro groove.

In this lesson you'll learn some cool Gene Harris blues/gospel licks. You'll also learn a common "bluesy" chord progression and some nice chord voicings.

We’re going to create blues licks using something other than the Blues Scale. This new scale gives us a bluesy sound without the same “biting” quality of the blues scale.

In this lesson you'll learn several different Otis Spann licks, including how to play his fast 32nd-note runs and fills. Each lick can be used over the entire 12-bar blues progression (which we also review in the lesson), giving you a wealth of improvisation material at your fingertips!