Rock and/Or Roll – Lick of The Week #24

This week, David Freeman walks us through a classic rock riff in a Zeppelin-esque style with some staple Blues-Rock features. From minor to major 3rd hammer-ons, blues notes and sliding three-note chords. This riff has a bunch of features that every blues or classic rock player should know. It’s based around a 12-bar blues sequence in A, so straight off, most players will feel pretty at home here. The main part also borrows from the classic blues riff that we all learnt when first introduced to the genre. Think of pretty much any Status Quo song and you’ll have it!

Things get a little bit more interesting, however, with the sliding triads that occur between chord changes every few bars. These triad chords spell out the underlying dominant 7th harmony more explicitly than the main part of the riff does. They also offer quite a bit of a challenge when sliding between them. Make sure you take your time with this. Once you get things up to speed at 166 bpm, it can be easy to overshoot the slide. Especially since you’re moving three fingers at once which are often on three different frets.

If you want to learn more about the scales and techniques used in this lick, you can find them in Level 3 of our online guitar syllabus. Our syllabus covers the six fundamentals of guitar playing over five levels and will take you from a beginner to expert. To find out more head over to our Syllabus page or our Online Shop to subscribe.

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