5 Blues Licks That Help You Build Better Solos - Y109

In this lesson, Lee shows how five blues licks can do more than give you new notes to play. Each phrase has a job inside the solo: opening the idea, responding to it, developing it, building tension, and resolving the whole thing.

The goal is to stop collecting endless licks and start using phrases in a way that helps your solos feel longer, more connected, and more musical.

Episode: Y109 - 5 Blues Licks That Help You Build Better Solos

YouTube Embed

[Insert YouTube embed here]

Podcast Embed

[Insert podcast embed here]

What You'll Learn

How to use an opening lick as a strong first statement
How rests and space make simple phrases sound bigger
How to create a response phrase from the original idea
How to develop a lick by repeating and stretching one small idea
How to build tension over the V and IV chords
How to resolve a solo back into the original sound

Building Solos With Licks That Have a Job

One of the biggest problems blues players run into is running out of ideas halfway through a solo. The answer is not always learning more licks. A better approach is learning what each phrase is supposed to do.

In this lesson, each lick plays a different role. The first lick makes the opening statement. The second responds to it. The third develops the idea. The fourth builds tension over the V and IV chords. The fifth resolves the solo and brings everything back home.

Lick 1: The Opening Statement

The first lick starts high, outlines the root, and targets the major third. The slide into the phrase gives it energy right away, while the rest before the next root note makes that note sound much bigger.

This opening phrase establishes the main sound of the solo. It uses the root, the major third, and a strong bend to create a confident first statement.

Lick 2: The Response

The second lick takes ideas from the opening phrase and moves them into a lower register. It uses a similar triplet feel, but slows the rhythm down with quarter notes so it sounds like an answer instead of a repeat.

This phrase also brings in the minor third and the major third, giving the response a slightly different color while still feeling connected to the first idea.

Lick 3: The Development Phrase

The third lick develops the opening statement by taking one part of it and stretching it out. The repeated bend creates more tension each time it comes back.

This is a powerful way to make a solo feel more intentional. Instead of jumping to a completely new idea, you can repeat and develop one small part of the original phrase.

Lick 4: The Tension Builder

The fourth lick happens over the V chord and IV chord in a 12-bar blues in E. Lee uses a B7 sound moving to an A7 sound, temporarily shifting the idea to fit each chord.

The chromatic walkdown, blues scale sound, and minor-third-to-major-third movement create tension while still staying connected to the blues progression.

Lick 5: The Resolution Phrase

The final phrase uses double stops and a chromatic walkdown before resolving into the top of an E chord. This gives the solo a clear sense of arrival.

The phrase then moves into a Stevie Ray Vaughan-style turnaround sound that fits the B9 or B7 tag chord. This helps the whole solo feel complete instead of unfinished.

Practice Assignment

Choose one blues lick you already know.
Use it first as an opening statement.
Create a response by changing the register, rhythm, or ending note.
Repeat one small part of the lick to develop tension.
Try moving a phrase over the V and IV chords of a 12-bar blues.
End with a clear resolution back to the I chord.

Focus on giving each lick a purpose instead of simply playing one phrase after another.

Continue Your Training

Related Lessons

Transcript

Welcome, Lee here from Play Guitar Academy. One of the biggest frustrations blues players have is running out of ideas halfway through a solo. You start something, it sounds good, you play a few licks and then suddenly you're repeating yourself or you're wondering what you're gonna play next. The solution isn't learning hundreds of licks. It's understanding the different jobs that these single phrases can do inside a solo.

Today I'm gonna show you five blues licks to help you build longer, more connected solos. I have a bunch prepared for you here. Let's go and take a look at the first one. Here's the opening statement.

So this says something right away. We're sliding up high and we're going to outline the root in the beginning. So 14 on B to 12, there's our E right there. And then we're gonna be doing a bend up to the major third. Two times, but look at that rest that we're putting in there. That rest is going to really make the next E note sound huge, right?

So one, bam. Now we finish off this opening statement with something on a B string. 14, 12, 14, and then a bend up to the major third, 14 full bend on the high E string and then to the root. So we're finishing on the root. We're targeting the major third through this.

Very cool opening statement. I think that says something. And what we're gonna do is take some of these ideas, the slide up and then the bend up and the part on the B string. And we're gonna use those to connect other statements and to draw some of these out.

So now we're starting off similar to this. We're taking the triplet idea, that's the beginning of each of the phrases. We're gonna use that again. But we're doing it in a lower register. We're going up to the major third. That's 13th fret on the G and then 12th and 14th on the B.

Now we're doing quarter notes, which we haven't really done a lot of yet. We're slowing it down a little bit. That's gonna make it sound like we're responding to that opening statement. And then now we're gonna head our way down with the triplet.

We're gonna do a slight quarter step bend on the minor third on that 12th fret. That's a sound we haven't heard in the opening statement. So we're gonna be using some of this minor third and major third to our advantage here.

So we've taken the ideas with the response, but we've changed them slightly and put them in different register. It makes it sound like the continuation of the opening statement.

All right, I enjoy that one.

Now let's go ahead and take a look at the development phase. So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna take parts of our opening statement. We're gonna start with the slide up on the 14th fret. That's gonna be the same. And we're gonna really take a look at that. We're gonna really, really get everything we can out of that bend.

So here is lick number three, the development phase. We're getting a lot more tension on that. The more that you repeat something, at this point, you know it's a lot longer than the opening statement was.

The longer that repeat goes, the more tension that you're building. It's pretty, I love doing things like that. It really gets people's attention. And we have developed that first idea. We've taken the same opening. We stopped on one of the ideas and we repeated it a whole ton of times. And then we ended very similar just to the beginning one. So it's kind of like we took the first phrase and elongated it there.

Okay, let's take a look at the next one, lick number four. This is the tension builder. So what we are doing here, this is over the, in the 12 bar blues in E, this is over the five chord, which is the B, and then the four chord, which is the A7, B7 and A7.

And I thought, what could build some tension here? What's something that we can link these scales together, but still get a little bit of outside sounds. The blues scale always works there. So we're gonna have a flat five, but we're kind of doing it in the key of B. We're changing this.

So first thing we're doing is a Stevie Ray Vaughan five chord. He does things like that. We're gonna go 14, 13, 12. That's walking down from the ninth to the flat nine to the root.

And then we're gonna do a blues scale lick. Major blues scale. So we're adding in actually the minor third to major third.

All together, the first is a triplet, then the rest are 16th. This perfectly fits over the B seventh chord. And now we're gonna do the same thing down a whole step, exactly the same. That's gonna fit perfectly over the A seventh chord.

So we temporarily change keys for each of those chords. Builds tension. We have some chromatic walk downs. We have the minor third to major third from the major blues scale.

All right, the last thing we're gonna take a look at is the resolution lick. The resolution lick here, resolution phrase, is we're gonna take something that's completely different, but wind it back into our original sound. So here we're gonna be doing double stops. We're gonna go up to 16th fret on the G and E.

So this is a chromatic walk down, 16, 16, 15, 15, 15, 14. And then we're gonna end up with the top of an E chord, 13th fret on the G and 12th fret on the high E.

And then we're gonna wait for just a second, go with that ring and do a turnaround, Stevie Ray Vaughan turnaround. We have the B note, which is the root of that turnaround chord, the tag chord. And then we're gonna go to the ninth, which is at the 14th fret, do that twice. And it's gonna match that B nine or B seven chord perfectly.

Hey, thanks for watching. If you've ever felt like your solos start out strong, but they run out of steam pretty fast, stop focusing on collecting new licks and new information and take the things that you know and start to use them and understand how to connect them with other strong ideas.

Thanks for hanging out with me today. If you want more information on this, check out my blues elevation toolkit, link is in the description and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

NOT SURE WHAT TO PRACTICE NEXT?

Get weekly practice ideas, lessons, and guitar workouts delivered to your inbox.

Your information is kept safe. It's never shared with third parties.