littlesister
Verified buyer
04/18/25
Play Blues Guitar 5
There is always something new to learn with Truefire courses and Play Blues Guitar 5 is no exception. Recommended without reservation.
Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon
Supercharge Your Blues Guitar Licks with this Blues Learning Path Core Course
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TrueFire
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About this course
Welcome to Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon for intermediate to late Intermediate students of blues guitar.
This Blues Learning Path core course is presented by 4 top TrueFire educators: Jeff McErlain, Corey Congilio, Tom Wolfe and Mike Zito.
The Lick Lexicon curriculum is comprised of select blues guitar lessons from the educators’ existing TrueFire course libraries.
Music is a language. In the same way that words and sentences are connected to form stories, musical licks and phrases are connected to form solos. And just like any language, the more robust your musical vocabulary is, the more interesting and diverse your solos will be. The video guitar lessons in this core course will equip you with an essential vocabulary of licks along with the technical skills required to take your soloing skills to the next level.
Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon is organized into 2 sections. In the first section, you’ll work on taking a series of licks and actually building a solo with them. Section 2 is full of “Spicy Licks” - and learning these will help you keep your playing fresh and interesting.
When you’ve completed the lessons here in Lick Lexicon, you’ll find more lessons focused on building your vocabulary in Lick Vocabulary, also a Play Blues Guitar 5 core course.
The educators demonstrate all of the key examples over jam tracks (where and when applicable) to simulate a real-world application, in a musical context. All of the key examples are also tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes.
You’ll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop or slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons. Plus, you’ll have all of the available jam tracks to work with on your own.
Take as much time as you need to work through each video guitar lesson before moving on to the next lesson. If you want to dig deeper or wider into any of the topics covered in this core course, check out the recommended supplementary courses in your learning path where you’ll find more examples, techniques and insight from top TrueFire educators.
Grab your guitar and let’s get started!
This Blues Learning Path core course is presented by 4 top TrueFire educators: Jeff McErlain, Corey Congilio, Tom Wolfe and Mike Zito.
The Lick Lexicon curriculum is comprised of select blues guitar lessons from the educators’ existing TrueFire course libraries.
Music is a language. In the same way that words and sentences are connected to form stories, musical licks and phrases are connected to form solos. And just like any language, the more robust your musical vocabulary is, the more interesting and diverse your solos will be. The video guitar lessons in this core course will equip you with an essential vocabulary of licks along with the technical skills required to take your soloing skills to the next level.
Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon is organized into 2 sections. In the first section, you’ll work on taking a series of licks and actually building a solo with them. Section 2 is full of “Spicy Licks” - and learning these will help you keep your playing fresh and interesting.
When you’ve completed the lessons here in Lick Lexicon, you’ll find more lessons focused on building your vocabulary in Lick Vocabulary, also a Play Blues Guitar 5 core course.
The educators demonstrate all of the key examples over jam tracks (where and when applicable) to simulate a real-world application, in a musical context. All of the key examples are also tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes.
You’ll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop or slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons. Plus, you’ll have all of the available jam tracks to work with on your own.
Take as much time as you need to work through each video guitar lesson before moving on to the next lesson. If you want to dig deeper or wider into any of the topics covered in this core course, check out the recommended supplementary courses in your learning path where you’ll find more examples, techniques and insight from top TrueFire educators.
Grab your guitar and let’s get started!
What you'll learn
- Connect musical licks into cohesive solos
- Expand guitar lick vocabulary
- Learning to think musically while soloing
- Build blues guitar solo vocabulary
- Develop improvisational skills
Release date: 09/14/2016 • 2h 07m runtime
Sample lessons
Solo #1
Performance
Solo #1
Summary
Bueno Massa
Lick #2
Palm Some Moore
Lick #3
What's included
39 lessons • 33 charts • 32 Jam Tracks
Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon
Welcome to Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon for intermediate to late Intermediate students of blues guitar.
This Blues Learning Path core course is presented by 4 top TrueFire educators: Jeff McErlain, Corey Congilio, Tom Wolfe and Mike Zito.
The Lick Lexicon curriculum is comprised of select blues guitar lessons from the educators' existing TrueFire course libraries.
Music is a language. In the same way that words and sentences are connected to form stories, musical licks and phrases are connected to form solos. And just like any language, the more robust your musical vocabulary is, the more interesting and diverse your solos will be. The video guitar lessons in this core course will equip you with an essential vocabulary of licks along with the technical skills required to take your soloing skills to the next level.
Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon is organized into 2 sections. In the first section, you'll work on taking a series of licks and actually building a solo with them. Section 2 is full of "Spicy Licks" - and learning these will help you keep your playing fresh and interesting.
When you've completed the lessons here in Lick Lexicon, you'll find more lessons focused on building your vocabulary in Lick Vocabulary, also a Play Blues Guitar 5 core course.
The educators demonstrate all of the key examples over jam tracks (where and when applicable) to simulate a real-world application, in a musical context. All of the key examples are also tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes.
You'll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop or slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons. Plus, you'll have all of the available jam tracks to work with on your own.
Take as much time as you need to work through each video guitar lesson before moving on to the next lesson. If you want to dig deeper or wider into any of the topics covered in this core course, check out the recommended supplementary courses in your learning path where you'll find more examples, techniques and insight from top TrueFire educators.
Grab your guitar and let's get started!
This Blues Learning Path core course is presented by 4 top TrueFire educators: Jeff McErlain, Corey Congilio, Tom Wolfe and Mike Zito.
The Lick Lexicon curriculum is comprised of select blues guitar lessons from the educators' existing TrueFire course libraries.
Music is a language. In the same way that words and sentences are connected to form stories, musical licks and phrases are connected to form solos. And just like any language, the more robust your musical vocabulary is, the more interesting and diverse your solos will be. The video guitar lessons in this core course will equip you with an essential vocabulary of licks along with the technical skills required to take your soloing skills to the next level.
Play Blues Guitar 5: Lick Lexicon is organized into 2 sections. In the first section, you'll work on taking a series of licks and actually building a solo with them. Section 2 is full of "Spicy Licks" - and learning these will help you keep your playing fresh and interesting.
When you've completed the lessons here in Lick Lexicon, you'll find more lessons focused on building your vocabulary in Lick Vocabulary, also a Play Blues Guitar 5 core course.
The educators demonstrate all of the key examples over jam tracks (where and when applicable) to simulate a real-world application, in a musical context. All of the key examples are also tabbed and notated for your practice, reference and study purposes.
You'll also get Guitar Pro files so that you can play, loop or slow down the tab and notation as you work through the lessons. Plus, you'll have all of the available jam tracks to work with on your own.
Take as much time as you need to work through each video guitar lesson before moving on to the next lesson. If you want to dig deeper or wider into any of the topics covered in this core course, check out the recommended supplementary courses in your learning path where you'll find more examples, techniques and insight from top TrueFire educators.
Grab your guitar and let's get started!
Building a Solo
This section is not just about learning licks, but rather learning where they go in the song! That way you will be able to build solos that go with the chord changes.
TIP! Soloing is more than just licks. You need to understand the correlation between phrasing, melody and harmony. Becoming a good soloist is as much if not more mental than physical.
When you are working on various soloing concepts, ask yourself questions like - What chords will this approach work over? What groove or feel does this solo fit best over? What is the best note choice for this part? How can I get from here to there in the solo? Are there other scale options? Does my solo have a beginning, a middle and an end? - Or am I just rambling on.
Asking yourself these questions as you are beginning to build up your soloing chops will help make sure you are really thinking about what you are playing and working on. If you put in the time on this now, it will eventually lead you to the ultimate place for soloists where you won't have to think about any of it at all - you just play!
TIP! Soloing is more than just licks. You need to understand the correlation between phrasing, melody and harmony. Becoming a good soloist is as much if not more mental than physical.
When you are working on various soloing concepts, ask yourself questions like - What chords will this approach work over? What groove or feel does this solo fit best over? What is the best note choice for this part? How can I get from here to there in the solo? Are there other scale options? Does my solo have a beginning, a middle and an end? - Or am I just rambling on.
Asking yourself these questions as you are beginning to build up your soloing chops will help make sure you are really thinking about what you are playing and working on. If you put in the time on this now, it will eventually lead you to the ultimate place for soloists where you won't have to think about any of it at all - you just play!
Let's Start Here
Let's Start Here - I Chord: Lick #1 is a video guitar lesson presented by Corey Congilio and is sourced from Solo Factory: Texas Blues.
Here's a basic lick in pattern one of the A minor pentatonic scale. One of the concepts I teach my beginning blues improvising students is to think root. The root (A in this case) is a safe place to begin or end a lick. It just has to sound good! What better way to build confidence in soloing than starting out with a lick you know will sound great right off the bat. Seek out the roots and try to move this (and all forthcoming licks) to all positions of the pentatonic scale. This lick starts with pickup notes into the root note A on the 4th string 7th fret. It stays almost strictly pentatonic until we get to the double stop on bar 3. The double stop riff adds an F# (6th degree of A) and an Eb (b5) to our normal pentatonic box shape. This lick is melodic and not too difficult so, seems like a good place to start!
Here's a basic lick in pattern one of the A minor pentatonic scale. One of the concepts I teach my beginning blues improvising students is to think root. The root (A in this case) is a safe place to begin or end a lick. It just has to sound good! What better way to build confidence in soloing than starting out with a lick you know will sound great right off the bat. Seek out the roots and try to move this (and all forthcoming licks) to all positions of the pentatonic scale. This lick starts with pickup notes into the root note A on the 4th string 7th fret. It stays almost strictly pentatonic until we get to the double stop on bar 3. The double stop riff adds an F# (6th degree of A) and an Eb (b5) to our normal pentatonic box shape. This lick is melodic and not too difficult so, seems like a good place to start!
Double Stompin'
Double Stompin' - I Chord: Lick #4 is a video guitar lesson presented by Corey Congilio and is sourced from Solo Factory: Texas Blues.
Let's play some licks over a straight blues feel. Think good ole fashioned rock n' roll for these examples. I also would cite SRV's tune "The House Is Rockin" as a good reference. This lick will be similar to the previous three shuffle licks but, notice how changing the feel and increasing the tempo dramatically changes phrasing and execution. It's fair to say that the greats of Texas blues borrowed from rock n' roll legends like Chuck Berry and even Bill Haley. Maybe we should borrow from them too.
Let's play some licks over a straight blues feel. Think good ole fashioned rock n' roll for these examples. I also would cite SRV's tune "The House Is Rockin" as a good reference. This lick will be similar to the previous three shuffle licks but, notice how changing the feel and increasing the tempo dramatically changes phrasing and execution. It's fair to say that the greats of Texas blues borrowed from rock n' roll legends like Chuck Berry and even Bill Haley. Maybe we should borrow from them too.
Left Alone
Left Alone - I Chord: Lick #9 is a video guitar lesson presented by Corey Congilio and is sourced from Solo Factory: Texas Blues.
This will sound great over any chord however we're going to start on the I chord here. This lick is a great way to start a slow blues. I remember learning this idea from Arlen Roth many years ago. I then heard SRV do it in Cold Shot. I enjoy playing this idea over a slow blues so, I thought I'd include it. What you want to take from this lick is merely the double stop/hybrid picking idea. By keeping the high A note ringing, we achieve a cool droning sound that is haunting when played over a slow blues. I kept the approach to this one simple so that you could wrap your fingers around it quickly. Gaining independence with your appendages takes time so, practice this slowly and get a good sound before trying to implement it.
This will sound great over any chord however we're going to start on the I chord here. This lick is a great way to start a slow blues. I remember learning this idea from Arlen Roth many years ago. I then heard SRV do it in Cold Shot. I enjoy playing this idea over a slow blues so, I thought I'd include it. What you want to take from this lick is merely the double stop/hybrid picking idea. By keeping the high A note ringing, we achieve a cool droning sound that is haunting when played over a slow blues. I kept the approach to this one simple so that you could wrap your fingers around it quickly. Gaining independence with your appendages takes time so, practice this slowly and get a good sound before trying to implement it.
2 to 1
2 to 1 - IV Chord: Lick #2 is a video guitar lesson presented by Corey Congilio and is sourced from Solo Factory: Texas Blues.
We're venturing into pentatonic pattern 2 here. We start in pattern 2 and end back at home base in pattern 1. Notice how we telegraph the root in the A7 bar. See, landing on the root is cool, especially when you're just learning how to put it all together.
We're venturing into pentatonic pattern 2 here. We start in pattern 2 and end back at home base in pattern 1. Notice how we telegraph the root in the A7 bar. See, landing on the root is cool, especially when you're just learning how to put it all together.
Descend Me
Descend Me - IV Chord: Lick #5 is a video guitar lesson presented by Corey Congilio and is sourced from Solo Factory: Texas Blues.
Stevie Ray Vaughan would often do this type of lick. This slight descending bend always sounds awesome to me. There is a real lyrical quality to it. Hopefully you dig this one as much as I do. The lick is based in pattern 2 and, this is a good thing. Texas blues players play in this position a lot. There are some great licks hiding on the first three strings and our goal will be to exploit this area of the neck.
Stevie Ray Vaughan would often do this type of lick. This slight descending bend always sounds awesome to me. There is a real lyrical quality to it. Hopefully you dig this one as much as I do. The lick is based in pattern 2 and, this is a good thing. Texas blues players play in this position a lot. There are some great licks hiding on the first three strings and our goal will be to exploit this area of the neck.
+ 32 more lessons
Reviews
6 results
rmctelus
Verified buyer
02/08/25
Hot and useful licks in A (I, IV, V) and other keys
In my opinion: Excellent for early intermediate players and beyond. Corey Congilio starts things off with a series of lessons in the Key of A that covers licks in the I, IV and V chords. Other instructors cover of variety of licks in various keys, tastes and tempi. Very much worth a look at the samples to see whether it’s up your street. Lots of bending.
LouisPRS
Verified buyer
11/28/24
Don' miss this one!
An exhaustive collection of blues licks following chord changes by some of the best Truefire instructors!
wholmer
12/23/20
Learn the Licks
Learning to solo is like learning to talk. Baby steps are needed to begin with (as in everything you try to do) and this is the way to start. Getting these short little words and sentences added to your vocabulary will get you moving on to being able to express yourself.
rbroeg
Verified buyer
07/14/20
A nice collection
This is a terrific collection of licks. It really helps with creativity
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