 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MGRmusic.com and in this video we're going to learn five easy rock and blues guitar licks. All of the licks that you're about to learn are very easy to get started with and they're great platform builders if you're just getting into lead guitar playing. All of the notes from these licks come from one of the five shapes of the minor pentatonic scale so if you haven't already learned this scale there are two videos on the Blackstar YouTube channel which outline how to play this scale in all five positions. So all of these licks use one of those shapes and they also bring in all your techniques like your hammer-ons, your slides, your bends, your pull-offs. These are all things you can integrate into guitar licks to make them a little bit more special. The tones you're hearing in this video are coming from the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 which I've got running on the Drive channel and I'm using the Shergold Masquerator which is a triple single chord loaded guitar. The amp you're hearing is mic'd up with a Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser mic. First lick is a really cool rock lick based in the first shape of the minor pentatonic scale. Here's the lick and then we'll break it down. So I'm not actually doing a lot with this lick. I'm in that first pentatonic position like I said. I'm doing a full step bend on the seventh fret of the G. Then I'm doing a double stock which means I'm playing two strings at once. I'm playing the fifth fret on the B and the fifth fret on the E. So I'm hitting that twice. Then you may notice I repeated that phrase. So if we think of this in counting terms I'm going one and two and three and and then on the four and the end of four I'm doing one more bend and one more double stop. This is a lick that you'll typically see if you're into players like Angus Young or even dating. A little bit further back to players like Chuck Berry. It's a really cool repeating idea and now what you can do is you can vary the second or third or fourth time whichever one you want. I've done it on the second time here. I'm going to do that like again but I'm going to replace the four and instead of doing a bend on another double stop I'm going to play this double stop here on the seven of the G and B and I'm just going to give that a little bend. It doesn't have to be an exact pitch. It's more of a sound thing. If you're looking for a pitch I'm probably doing about a semitone. You can shake it up with some vibrato as well just to give it a little bit of an edge. So here's the lick all the way through slowly and then at full speed. The second lick is also in the first shape pentatonic lick. This is an ascending triplet lick. So here's the lick in full and then we'll break it down. So this is a cool lick because it gives the impression of playing quite fast but really it's not that hard to do. What we're actually doing is we're ascending up the minor pentatonic scale but in these triplet patterns. So a triplet is when we apply three notes over a beat. So if you're counting that it would be one under, two under, three under, four under. So what we're actually doing is we're doing a triplet pattern that sort of goes backwards and forwards at the same time. So the first grouping is seven five seven on the A string. Now you can pick every single note if you want or you can do what I did in the first play through there which is I did a pull off and then pick that second note completely up to you which way you approach that. Both of them give you the same result but picking every note gives you a little bit more attack on that fifth fret but again it's all down to whatever sort of sound you're trying to capture with this lick. Now what we're doing is we're going up the scale in this sort of triplet pattern. So every time I do that pattern I need to move up the scale one note. So you'll notice I've got a bit of a pattern going there. So when I'm doing three notes on one string then I'm doing the fifth fret on the string below, the seventh fret on the string above and that fifth again. What I'm then actually doing is I'm repeating that same pattern but on the D and G and then on the G and B and when I get to the top of this I should be at the end of the second beat in the second bar. So once I hit that point I want to do a full step bend on the eighth fret of the B string with lots of vibrato to round the lick off. So here is that slowly and then at full speed. Alright this third lick is a really simple one it's just four notes and this is a really cool repeating idea that you can build on. So here's the lick in full and then we'll break it down. So this lick is based in the first position of the pentatonic scale and it's very very easy. I played it then three times and ended on a string bend but the nature of this lick means you can repeat this as many times as you want and you don't even have to end it with a bend you can take it out into another lick if you want to. This is a very simple lick. We're starting with a full step bend on the seventh fret of the G, skipping to the fifth of the E then we're going to pull off on the eight to the five of the B. That's all there is to that lick you can repeat it as many times as you want. Like I said I did it three times there and went to the bend you can take this wherever you want. It's a really great sort of building block into more complex rock lex. So here's this one slowly and then again at full speed. Moving into that second pentatonic shape now for this fourth lick this is a really cool traditional blues style lick. So again there's not many notes in this lick we're in this upper position of the second shape and all I'm really using is the ten on the B and the eight and ten on the E string. So I'm starting off with a full step bend on the E. Do that twice. You can really drag the bends up if you want a little bit more soul in that bluesy lick. Really kind of pull those notes out of there. Then I'm hitting the eighth fret on the E. You notice I give that just a little bend there with the first finger. This is what's known as a quarter tone bend it's not quite a semitone so not quite the distance of one fret it's more of a little pitch movement that we hear like a vocal sort of fluctuation on the note. Then I'm just playing the tenth fret again straight and doing another one of those little bluesy bends on the eight. Then I'm landing on the ten of the B. On the second ten round I'm doing exactly the same lick but instead of doing the sort of bluesy bend on the eight again I'm just finishing on that note. So this is a great kind of introductory lick to a nice slow blues type solo. Works great in a rock context too. So here's the lick in full slowly and then at full speed. The fifth and final lick is a really fun soaring lead line which is up in the fourth shape of the pentatonic scale so playing up here now at the 15th fret. So here's the lick in full. So this lick is a series of string bends. I'm doing a bend on the 15th of the B string and when that bend is at its pitch which is a full step I'm hitting the 15th fret on the high E string with my little finger. You get this little clash between those two notes but this is one of the great things about this lick it kind of makes it a little bit raw sounding. When the bend is at its peak the notes are actually perfectly harmonized in what's known as a minor third. You don't have to worry about that just yet but the reason it causes a clash is because on the way up to that minor third you get this little bit of dissonance with a note that's called the second, the major second. It kind of clashes slightly with what we're playing on the high string but that's the really cool thing about this lick. It gives it that kind of screaming bend sound. So doing that four times and you can really let the notes bleed into each other on this as well because that clash is almost what makes this lick really cool. Then we're doing another bend on the 15th but this time we're doing a bend and release and we're going down to the 13th of the B and then we're hitting the 15th on the E string with a big bend. This is really cool for adding to those big moments in your guitar solo where you really want the guitar to sound like it's soaring. So here is that lick once more slowly and then at full speed. So there you go there are five really cool really easy rock and blues licks that use only notes from the minor pentatonic scale. So like I said at the start if you're new to playing lead guitar these licks would be great to get started with. As I also mentioned they're all in the key of A minor which is the same key that you've learned your minor pentatonic scales in if you've used the videos on the Blackstar YouTube channel. If you have not already learned those scales go check those videos out as well. They show you how to play the minor pentatonic scale in all five positions in the key of A minor. You can also transpose these licks to any other key you want just by moving them to the relevant pentatonic position in the relevant key. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video and I hope you've enjoyed these licks. I hope you take these licks and put them into your own guitar solos. Please let us know down below in the comments what you thought of the video and how you got on with learning these licks and if there are any other topics you'd like us to cover in future videos please let us know what you guys want to learn. Thank you guys so much for watching please don't forget to check out the Blackstar Amplification YouTube channel for more lessons just like this one and go and head over to mgrmusic.com. If you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area there are a great network of teachers all over the UK so please head over there check out the music teacher database and see if there's a local teacher in your area. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you soon.