blues licks
Soulful guitar patterns
Blues licks are short melodic phrases characteristic of blues guitar and other blues instruments—the signature runs, bends, and note patterns that give the genre its sound.
A lick is a reusable fragment, not a complete solo, learned and recombined by players: He threw in a few blues licks during the jam session.
The term extends to any blues-inflected instrumental passage.
- riffsRepeated melodic figures
- bendsCurves or yields
- bent notesPitches altered mid-sound
- string bendingAltering pitch by pushing
- slidesMoves smoothly across surface
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- blues music
- playing techniquespicking, arpeggiated, fingerpicking, spiccato, block chords