Blues rock is the foundation for all contemporary roots-rock electric guitar styles, pioneered by Cream’s Eric Clapton, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and several
Blues rock is the foundation for all contemporary roots-rock electric guitar styles, pioneered by Cream’s Eric Clapton, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and several other classic bands. It was spawned during the British Invasion, with many of its most notable exponents—Clapton, Page, Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, Peter Green, Alvin Lee and Rory Gallagher, to name a few—hailing from the British Isles.
But blues-rock’s torch was also ably carried in the United States by players like Carlos Santana, Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter and Billy Gibbons.
In the Seventies, the sound of blues-rock endured, informing the work of players ranging from Angus Young, Joe Perry, Ace Frehley, Leslie West and Mahogany Rush’s Frank Marino to Pat Travers, Ronnie Montrose and Ted Nugent.
And if you dig early Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses, you’re also a fan of blues rock.
Let’s explore this style’s timeless vocabulary with a thorough lick lesson.
MINOR PENTATONIC MADNESS
In blues rock, minor pentatonic licks are commonly played in a “box” shape, as in FIGURE 1, which shows E minor pentatonic (E G A B D).
FIGURE 1
The two-notes-per-string layout makes it easy to play bends, hammer-ons/pull-offs and so forth, with the fret hand’s 1st and 3rd fingers exclusively. Such moves are largely confined to strings 1–3, with the lower strings used primarily for sustained or vibratoed notes, or, in longer runs, simply passed through on the way to other scale positions. (We’ll discuss other scale fingerings and position shifts later in this lesson.)
FIGURE 2 illustrates rudimentary blues-rock bending licks played within FIGURE 1���s shape, in a triplet rhythm (three evenly spaced attacks per beat).
FIGURE 2
As a general bending rule, push strings