E Minor Pentatonic Blues Scale Licks
In Flatpicking the Blues Brad Davis provides a good
number of G, C, and D licks for you to practice and utilize. There are
licks in the ear training exercises, licks in the bending section, licks
in the various song examples, bass run licks in the rhythm section, and
a ton of licks in the improvisation sections. One of your homework
assignments (page 85) was to go back to the beginning of the book and
repeat all of the improvisation exercises in the key of E. If you play
bluegrass and you work with the E minor pentatonic scale at the top of
page 84, you may notice that an awful lot of your standard bluegrass
licks in the key of G come directly from that Em blues scale, including
the most famous bluegrass guitar lick the Lester Flatt "G-run." Below we
will provide you with a couple of variations of the G-run and then move
on to show a number of other licks in G that are based on the Em blues
scale.
Lick #1:
This lick is one of the standard "G-run" licks in bluegrass. It is used
by bluegrass guitar players as a fill between vocal lines, to act as an
the "exclamation point" at the end of a solo, or as a kick of to a
solo. It is the most common lick in the bluegass guitar. Variations
abound, but this is one of the most common. Compare this G-run lick with
the E minor pentatonic blues scale. You will notice that every note of
the lick is in that particular scale.
Lick #2: This is another variation of the bluegrass G-run. There are a lot of them!
Lick #3:
This is a descending lick that is great to use at the end of a tune. You
will notice that every single note of this run comes from the E minor
pentatonic blues scale (lick #1). A variation of this would be to add on
the G-run (lick#2) to the end of this (don't repeat the final G, just
launch off of it and play the rest of the run).
