Your first licks

A lick is a short musical phrase, a few notes that sound like something. Solos are mostly licks strung together, and the fastest way to make the pentatonic sound like music is to learn a few classic ones and then change them.

These all use the A minor pentatonic box at the fifth fret.

Licks use a few techniques that tab writes with letters:

• h is a hammer-on. Pick the first note, then bring another finger down hard on a higher fret, so the second note sounds without picking it again.
• p is a pull-off, the reverse. With both fingers down, pick, then flick the higher finger off the string sideways, so the lower note sounds.
• b is a bend. Push the string across the fret so its pitch rises. The number after the b is the note to reach. Use two or three fingers behind each other to push, not one.

Bend the G string at the seventh fret until it sounds like the ninth fret, then play the eighth fret on the B string and the root on the high E. Check your bend by playing the ninth fret first, so you know the note you are aiming for. A bend that falls short sounds out of tune.

Pick the first note on each string and pull off to the second. It flows down the box in one movement. Then try it the other way, going up with hammer-ons: pick the fifth fret, hammer on to the higher note.

This walks down to the root on the low E. It is how a thousand blues solos end.

Now change them. Play lick one twice as slowly. Start lick two on a different string. Add a bend to lick three. Improvising is mostly this: taking phrases you know and bending them a little, until they are your own.