BB King Teaches How to Solo Over a Blues Progression! Animated Fretboard Guitar Lesson (fretLIVE)

[Music] um [Music] um [Music] so what i try to do there is to kind of like say here i am i'm supposed to be the guitar player the entertainer so here i am if we were playing for instance uh if you do a one i'll show you what i'm talking about [Music] then the five [Music] that's the way i resolve it so i would do in the g chord i might hit the tonic [Music] push up on the the the c there [Music] push it up to d again right back to the b flat bend again when you just yeah well that's what i hear so i'll take the four of the g right which is the c right but i don't want to hit it i don't want to hit the d first so i like to slide up to it and then you take that b flat and just nudge it almost between b flat and d right yeah that's great now uh sometimes i've got the time i might bring it on up to [Music] but most times it sounds better to me [Music] then i'd go back to the one again then if i get enough time again and want to play around with it just a little bit [Music] could you do that look again because that's [Music] so you're bending the start and uh and go up to the f f sharp right [Music] then we come back down to the eighth fret again [Music] so i haven't played that many notes but it's still kind of good everything that needs to be said hey everybody gary here with pal music and in this video we're going to go over that awesome bb king solo you just heard over slow blues and g and then the little lesson that followed it so this is from a three hour master class that i bought i recommend you buy from alfred music i'll link in the description i found this clip that i used here on youtube so i'm just taking this kind of four minute clip from this three hour master class adding the fret live animations and in this lesson we're going to take each phrase that bb plays go more in depth on the techniques being used slow it down talk about some of the theory implications what are these notes that he's bending to how does the notes that he's using relate to the chord and each step of the way i'm going to demonstrate taking these riffs from bb and kind of changing them up to insert them into your own personal vocabulary so to give them your own kind of flavor so here i'm going to do that with the first two riffs of the solo i'm going to play them like i learned them from bb and then i'm going to change them up just a little bit [Music] and now just a little different [Music] let's try that with one more riff and now workshopping it just a little bit [Music] because the kind of three-step process of learning the riff understanding its context then changing it up and making it your own that's how you really incorporate it into your own playing and use it as a creative tool so that's my goal here with these lessons so for pal music patrons every note played by bb i've tabbed out and i've put the stamps in the tab if you want to follow along with the tab and if you really want to go in depth on the study of applied music theory on the guitar learning the theory and then applying it to make music and learn songs that's what my fret live fretboard mastery program is all about you could take either a self-paced version of that program where it's self-guided through all the content or you could do a live version with a cohort of 40 other students weekly live zoom sessions where we interact on video and it's much more like a college experience where you get that camaraderie and weekly accountability so i'll link that in the description along with a video tour of the course where you could hear from students about how it's transformed they're playing and last but not least you can download two free multi-page full-color pdfs on the diatonic scale shapes and pentatonic scale shapes and those are also linked in the description all right let's get into the lesson now what really amazed me about bb here is his bending the bending accuracy so he's bending up three frets in pitch a minor third he's using his index finger to bend whole steps and all his bends are so in tune and sometimes you don't even know it's a bend because he doesn't actually bend like when he goes like this these are the two notes he goes all right so he's bending even when he doesn't have to so first a quick word on strings so during the course of making this video not just making the video but preparing for it i think i broke four e strings four of them little did i know that was about to be five so now this riff right here another one i actually broke three in one hour it's documented it was during a live patreon session so during this hour and a half session i broke three e strings trying to demonstrate bb's minor third bend [Music] wow you guys hear that just pop my e string that's the second string i broke tonight an f to a g sharp so he goes that's the third one of the night third one trifecta so i feel confident to say even though the signature bb king set of strings by gibson are tens that he got rid of the low e string and added an eight on the bottom and according to billy gibbons this is what he heard from bb as well at that time baby was one of the first exponents of the uh first wave of light gauge strength which was point [Music] my fingers are ripped up i started with tens didn't work i went to nines it was still killing me all right so i'm on my way to guitar center i thought switching from tens to nines was gonna do the trick but it's that major third pre-bend over and over like bb said to billy gibbons why work so hard i'm getting some eights so this set is eights this is an 8 to 38 i believe on this guitar i started filming the video with this guitar because i wanted the humbuckers but i broke the e string this was a eight and a half on here so i i've gone through all sorts of string experimenting i just don't know how to play in bb style without breaking strings anyway my main point is that if you're going to do index finger bends a whole step or these step and a half and even two whole step bends that bb does get yourself some really light gauge strings and try to find ones that are more adorable so as you're gonna see with bb style the notes you're bending to you have to think about what those notes are because he's always targeting notes with his bends right so this opening lick right there that's on the one chord g so we're right in this g major pentatonic so if we think about a g7 shape right here this is often called the e shape right because here's an e and in my fret life report mastery program we go over the whole cage system and so in that shape there's our our pentatonic pattern two our house of blues he goes and that's really outlining the chord five six one three one so real quick throughout this analysis i talk about how he's targeting chord tones so in a standard blues we have three chords the one four and the five and they're all dominant seven chords in this case g7 c7 d7 that's our one four five and to make a dominant seven chord we follow the formula of having a root a major third a perfect fifth and a minor seventh that's the formula so anytime i talk about him targeting a chord tone it's one of those tones relative to one of those chords but now he gives us that minor vibe right so then we switch to our classic [Music] now in the master class he talks about the scales he uses and this is definitely one of them whereas this i think he's thinking chord this he's thinking minor pentatonic right but when he runs down [Music] he gives that minor third a little micro bend not quite to the major third but somewhere in between [Music] all right then his second riff [Music] man this one i worked on so much so this riff he's starting with a minor third bend now we're on the four chord but he doesn't this riff is not really outlining the chord tones he's playing more in the minor the g minor pentatonic tonality so what he actually goes back and forth between is the flat seven of the key and the fifth of the key g minor that sounds cool over the four chord [Music] it's kind of jazzy actually right because in relation to the four chord it's actually the two and the four so those are like upper extension jazz tones right so it gives it a little bit of a jazzy feel so he pre-bends to work on your tuning hit the note you're going for here on the 13th fret and then see if you could match it that was flat there flat there we go it really you really gotta squeeze it up there now we're in that bb box [Music] so now this riff right here another one then he does that trill and that puts us in the the bb box right there so that first riff [Music] is straight out of this pentatonic box and the only reason i feel confident putting that there is in the master class those are the two main scales pentatonic scales he talks about this one and this one because the interviewer asks him to demonstrate going between those two and he does something like [Music] you know something like that anyway but so the bb box is so many things but that first riff i feel like we could think of in the context of that minor pentatonic but then when he goes that straight bb box right there right you know and then that's playing off that chord the c chord right just like here now here so he likes to play off the e shapes of these chords by doing that so you could kind of think of that as that e-shaped pentatonic there the bb box can be a lot of things but he's just playing off the cord now his vibrato watch him teach you his vibrato i won't but he he freehands it it's all like a shake in the wrist he's not touching the guitar with anything other than his finger on the string and he just kind of flutters his hand i can't freehand flutter i like to use the neck as a fulcrum for my vibrato but vibrato is the kind of thing you just want to practice for hours and hours just you know just vibrato it's such a signature thing to develop so after he goes [Music] now that that leads us back to the the g right so that's the major third of the g again slow bend up to the chord tone so that's an example how this bb box even though it's just [Music] he's bending to these other notes so it's and sometimes he bends there too so it's really this [Music] you know it's so many things because he bends from those notes to various different notes depending on the chord so up to that major third of the one chord [Music] then he goes [Music] so we're on the one chord again now g7 now where most people would go like this he goes he bends up to that note he bends up to that fifth so bends the second up to a major third [Music] and then index finger to that fifth and then comes down flat third to root so again mixing major minor right because here he went up one two major three five and then down the four flat three one right so mixing major and minor and then to the six which is part of the major part of the major scale or it's a major interval it's not a minor interval a major six [Music] so beautiful stylistic thing there from bb alright now we come back to the iv chord [Music] and he's gonna give us some chord tones he's gonna bend to the third so he goes three three two one and then and then from that major six to the flat seven a little so that little half step end and then he might just be going a little trill but i like doing pick pick pull now he goes down the arpeggia [Music] down this c major arpeggio [Music] now this here going from the fourth to the major third is such a bluesy move like when he goes [Music] or it's such a bluesy thing to do so adding to that arpeggio [Music] he's going four three one [Music] now here's to me the coolest lick of the entire solo [Music] [Music] so now up a minor seventh arpeggio root third fifth half step bend to the minor seven so that's like [Music] now [Music] now that lick he's bending a minor third to the root from the six [Music] then drops it down to the flat seven [Music] down to the five so it's [Music] so [Music] now that last time he's bending to the major third of the one chord so this is all on the four chord c but then up to this note which is back up to the one so again he's always even though that bb box is just those six notes it's so much more than that because he's bending to different he's basically bending through chromatics you know that two can become a flat three can become a three can depending on the chord he'll then say that note right now that's labeled two either a half step a whole step a step and a half [Music] all right then once he gets back to that one chord [Music] classic bb so he's just muting with his hand the other strings and putting his pinky on the g and just he uses that rake to get a bigger sound right [Applause] and then and then blues scale four to flat five little trill and then hit the four again and then walk down that blue scale but then bb box you're gonna bend the two to the flat three [Music] all right now i labeled this mixolydian mode so bb in the session plays the g major scale [Music] he talks about that being a scaly practices the major scale he actually doesn't practice the pentatonic scale he practices the chromatic scale and he says in the session the chromatic scale helps him hear things and it makes sense he's so good at jumping from half step to half step practicing the chromatic scale and so mixolydian mode he might not be thinking of it as mixolydian mode but it's g major [Music] so how is g major and d mixolydian the same notes so mixolydian mode is just the fifth mode of the major scale or of the diatonic scale and all that means is if in the major scale we start on the fifth note and end on the fifth note what we hear is the mixolydian mode so the fifth note in g is d so if we start and end on d we have d mixolydian mode so what makes it different than g major well when you hear those seven notes relative to the tonic of d then all the intervals are changed relative to the d so our ear is interpreting it differently because we're hearing it differently so why did i not label it as g major because i'm showing how he's relating to the chord and having it labeled as d mixolydian really shows how he's hitting the flat seven how he's hitting the major third how he's hitting the notes relative to the chord he's on which is d7 so when he goes it's part of that scale that's why i put it that way but similar to the opening line but here he's going this is over the v chord [Music] right you want to know you want to see the chord there too because he's playing off the chord tones [Applause] [Music] and then [Music] and again on that four chord he likes to hit that scale degree four over the over this chord so that [Music] and then these little micro bends micro bend on the seven five six three it's just kind of creating some momentum to this so just kind of leading us there [Music] you know ending on the root so that rudy's bending two to major three to the five to the one it's an arpeggio one three five three one three five three one so that's a way to play a g major arpeggio [Music] and then again that minor pentatonic coming down from the fifth to the fourth to the major third [Music] so in this opening solo just so you have some context in the three hour master class that i'm linking in the description that solo was an example of an opening solo where he said when he opens the song with a solo it's more of an introduction you know later if there's a second soul that will be building the intensity of the song but so there's a sweetness and a softness to that solo as kind of a way to open a song and then in the segment where he's teaching he's talking about playing off the chord so being bibi did his own teaching i mainly just went over the intro solo which he didn't discuss but there's a couple things during the teaching segment i also want to go over so bb spent more time in the bb box than the albert king box or the house of blues box so for example this lick [Music] where he goes [Music] that lick in the albert king box or the house of blues is to me way easier because you're bending with your third finger but he's bending with his first finger [Music] so very bebe thing to do but then he also plays the same lick in the house of blues well that's what i hear so i'll take the four of the g right which is the c right right but i don't want to hit it i don't want to hit the d first so i like to slide up to it and then you take that b flat and just nudge it almost between b flat and b right yeah that's great so here he's really demonstrating he knows these intervals not just knowing the note names he knows the intervals so he says this note is the 4 of the g and he says he's going to push it up to the 5. [Music] now what you're hearing him do a lot is this so he's raking the strings by muting them with my right hand you could also mute him with your left hand if you just put a finger over the strings [Music] and now he's hyper aware of is he bending this note the flat third is he bending it to the third [Music] or somewhere in between right so now we can move that bb box to the five chord then the the five [Music] and then on the four chord do the same thing and then on the one we can do the same thing right so we can move that [Music] right all right everybody so now i'm going to demonstrate trying to learn and play this solo as close to note for note as possible very close to the original it might lack some feel because it's me trying to be bb king that's not the ultimate goal the goal is to take that influence of bb king because i resonate with that sound i love that sound i want to take that influence and give it my own flavor right i want to put it in a gary blender but first i'm gonna try to really dissect and learn the ins and outs of his playing and then put it in my own blender so after i try to play it no for note then i'm gonna change it up a little and then i'm gonna leave 12 bars for you and i'll link the backing track in the description [Music] hey [Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] before i go i'd like to extend a huge thank you to the following upper level pal music patrons william creighton andrew vogel chris watson david crawford derek mickel don stringham donald james grass jake martin john cushman joseph mccarthy kent grissom lemuel fosten michael varney randy wallingford sam juan's scott lee shawn ellis stephen pisano trampus thompson thank you guys so much and thank you to all of the pal music patrons that help make this content possible happy playing i'll see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Pow Music

Views: 1,436,523

Keywords: bb king, blues guitar lesson, how to play bb king, bb king slow blues, bb king lesson, pentatonic scales, blues scale, guitar tutorial, major blues, minor blues, guitar tab, fretboard diagram, pow music, fretlive, gary heimbauer

Id: bhYXolbCrr0

Length: 32min 54sec (1974 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/sushicowboyshow]

This is some phd level shit. And I’m all for it. Unfortunately I’ve been a 101 level student the last 20 years

[u/AllTimeWorldChamp]

This is such a straightforward visualization, I can't believe I haven't seen it done like this before. Kudos.

[u/PentUpPentatonix]

great graphics

[u/smooth-move-ferguson]

The John Mayer equator video is also excellent.

[u/[deleted]]

Pretty amazing, the animation must have taken fucking forever.

[u/curiosityVeil]

We need more channels who teach like this.

[u/demonicdegu]

Thanks. Just subscribed.

[u/moffitts_prophets]

I came across this channel in the wild a few weeks ago as well!

He really does an excellent job or making the lessons easy to follow and practical to implement without stripping away any of the complexity or nuance of the original piece.

Big fan, will be going back to that channel and those lessons frequently.

[u/malcomhung]

This channel (or one just like it) breaks down a live Red House by Jimi. It's really cool.