By 
Our 4 Easy Guitar Licks – They sound harder than they are!
Introduction
This is a first for us! Our first ever “lesson”. We often use a few licks in our solos and improvisation, and thought it would be fun to teach you and show you them! Sometimes, you just want to sit down and learn some fun, easy guitar licks to spark that inspiration! So, in this article, we will be going over 4 easy guitar licks.
These easy guitar licks sound fancy but are super simple, and can fit perfectly into any solo! These won’t be the hardest licks you’ll ever learn, but they will give you some nice and simple options to throw into your playing!
Below is the full video going through each lick and showing you how to play it! Then below is the tab and an explanation of what’s going on in the lick—a sort of mini breakdown. We won’t go into each lick in huge detail!
So with that said, let us start with our first lick!
Lick 1
This is the first of our 4 easy guitar licks, and it is a super simple lick that’s a great way to end a solo! It works well as it is mostly just pentatonic (with an added 2 in there). Super easy to move around keys and even learn in different positions! However, for this article, we are going to learn it in E Minor position 1 box—where most people would consider “home”!
This lick is a “starting” lick—meaning that you can easily build upon it once you’ve learned it. Very simple to learn, and there aren’t many tips we can give you. Just learn the notes and pattern, and you’ll be able to throw this lick into your solos very quickly! You’ll soon expand and alter this lick to make it your own!
Lick 2
The next lick is a super bluesy riff! Using some chromatic and relative major notes. Again, it’s based in the E Minor position 1 box. This one is a bit tricky to get the fingering right, but once you learn the pattern and the rhythm, it will all fall into place! What’s great about this riff is that you can throw it onto the end of a repeating riff—a great way to end a repeating riff or phrase!
Tips for this lick: start slow and make sure you get the finger placement down! Once you know that, building up the speed and shuffle feel will happen quickly. Due to the shuffle and Texas blues sound of this lick, it can be limited in where you can use it. However, those times when a Texas shuffle blues feel is needed, this will be in your back pocket ready to go!
Lick 3
This is a super simple, yet fancy-sounding run up the neck using a few positions of the E Minor scale. Starting on the 8th fret and working up to the 15th fret, it only uses two strings—and is a great way to end or start a solo! This uses all hammer-ons, and with some gain and delay, it will sound much fancier than it is! If you have enough gain, you could do the whole run without picking—incorporating some Eddie Van Halen stylings in there.
A few tips for this riff: we recommend using your first and ring finger to play these licks. You can use your pinky, but using your ring finger will give you a stronger hammer-on and allow a clearer note to ring out! Also, you might want to expand this riff, and using your ring finger will free up your pinky to play another note. A great lick to move from the middle of the neck to the high end!
Lick 4
This final lick is just a simple run up the scale. However, we’re doing a repeating 6-note pattern! Very Eric Johnson type of run! Starting on the 10th fret, you only pick once per string and hammer on the second note. This sounds much harder than it actually is! You could pick this run if you want it to have more of a Joe Bonamassa kind of feel. I like to use hammer-ons, as it makes it simpler and easier!
This can be a bit tricky to learn at first because it isn’t a straight run up the strings-there are two strings where the pattern drops back to the 9th fret. However, just start slow and build up speed, and it will become second nature! This is a riff you really need to start slow and work up. Once you’ve mastered this lick, you’ll be able to shift it to other patterns and run up and down the neck with ease.
Conclusion
So that concludes our 4 easy guitar licks! These are great fun! Our advice would be to practice them with a metronome, from slow to fast, working to bring them up to speed gradually. Once you’ve got them up to speed, you can then focus on when and how to use them in solos! Learning the riff is one thing, but learning where to place them in your solos will take time and experimentation-so throw on some jam tracks and try them out!
Don’t forget that when you’re practicing, switch up the key and learn them in different keys. You want to be able to play all 4 easy guitar licks in all keys (or at least the ones you’ll frequently use). Try to learn them as fast as you can-this way, you’re ready for anything! However, don’t sacrifice precision and technique for speed! When you’re speeding licks up, make sure you maintain accuracy!
If you want to support the site then please give us a follow on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube.
Gigs & Guitars Affiliate Links:
Check out our other Articles here
