Get Off Your Keister and Learn 3 Blues Licks

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Craft Beer Explains My Chubby Belly I debated using the word "Keister" for a while, since the marketing department thought it may offend the Baby Boomers. Truth be told, I am mostly referring to my own lackluster performance lately. It's winter in Ohio. I haven't seen the sun in 3 months and I have developed a certain proclivity for consuming craft beer after work, a habit that fully explains the 11 pounds I have gained in the past 3 months. This is why I have a keister.

This is also why I have decided to start a this new section of JamPlay, casually titled "Weekend Warrior". To be frank, I "practice" the most on the weekends, but like my new craft-beer-influenced-laziness, I only now realized I have noodled every weekend since November and haven't learned much. I'm the Co-Owner of a guitar company, so this is a little embarassing to publically discuss. That got us to thinking, if someone actually put together a short list of actionable things I could practice this weekend, I'd probably do it. I'm just tired of noodling. Welcome to Weekend Warrior.

I don't care if you don't like blues, learn these 3 licks.

Sorry to be harsh but if you play an instrument, you shouldn't discriminate against genres (although the Bieber generation can graciously bow out). But, one should particularly not discriminate against the blues. It's everywhere, and these licks can be used in many styles of music. Even you, the 16-year-old-trying-to-impress-the-ladies. Try these out, and the lunchroom babes may even say "man, Johnny has some soul!".

Chuck Berry Lick by Chris Liepe

Taught by Chris Liepe

This first lick is from Chris Liepe, introducing a simple, yet useful lick in E. Aggressive in the front, mild in the back.. this lick is a staple of blues, and can help you step up your improv prowess.

Double Stop Lick in D by DJ Phillips

Taught by DJ Phillips

This second lick is from DJ Phillips. If you don't know of DJ, he is a tall, affable drink-of-water who mainly teaches funky song lessons and intermediate, genre based lesson sets on blues, rock, country, as well as others. This lick has some nastiness, so be sure to make it wail!

Hybrid Blues Lick in Am by David Wallimann

Taught by David Wallimann

This last lick is from David Wallimann, a moderately easy lick that dances between the A major pentatonic and A minor blues scale. This lick is very universal in nature, and can help bridge the gap between sections of your lead play. Get to work!

Are you one of the select few?

Did you actually try to digest this information? This isn't entertainment folks, it's curated content to inspire, improve, or refresh your ability. My goal is not to overwhelm you with something you may not be able to play, or overwhelm you with nerdy music theory, but to give you the tools need to start sounding better. Playing guitar like crap just isn't very cool.

So. If I could predict the effectiveness of this, I would assume that maybe 1 in 10 people will try to digest this information and actually learn these licks. Are you that 1 person? If so, I applaud your willingness to take this seriously. I also (rather shamelessly) would like to suggest that JamPlay may be the answer you need to move your playing forward. There's alot of crap out there, and we exist to produce great content to make you a better player. You owe it to yourself to leverage our content, or at least grab a free trial account.

Inspire Ideas

Our Lick & Riff Library is meant inspire new ideas and is presented in a brief, quick-hitting format. Most are under 5 minutes long, and most can be learned relatively quickly compared to a full song.

Get Out of Your Rut

I don't know about you, but I get in ruts... pretty often. These licks help me break the mold; get out of my comfortable positions on the neck, force me to explore different keys, and help reshape my playing.

321 to Learn

I just showed you 3 of our licks. There's still another 318 to learn and benefit from. Grab a membership and get started by digging into our platform of courses, teaching tools, libraries and more.

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First Weekend Warrior is Complete

Welp, what did you think?

You are actually still reading? Bonus points for you. I sincerely do appreciate you taking the time out of your day to read this new, faux-newsletter we are offering up. Our plan is to do this every Friday, and have it sent to your inbox by around 2pm EST. We are already in the process of building around 20 of these, that way we have some in the hopper ready to unleash!

Next week, we will be looking at Bends. Mine could use some work, so I am assuming yours could as well (boy is that causation argument). Anyway, thanks a bunch for reading, for playing guitar, and enjoying the instrument. Your passion for instrument is why we exist as a business, and we can't thank you enough for the support, loyalty, and love you have shown us over the years.

Cheers,

Chris Dawson
JamPlay Co-Founder

Chris Dawson JamPlay Co-Founder Chris Dawson is a JamPlay Co-Founder. He graduated from the University of Dayton in 2005 with double majors in Entrepreneurship and MIS, and shortly after began creating jamplay.com with partners Jeff Booth (Colorado) and Kevin Wimer (Dayton, OH). He first began the development of jamplay.com in 2007, but transitioned to artist relations, video editing, and operating the Ohio production studio from 2009-2013. Chris is now tasked with front-end web development, client-side code, accounting, music publishing, and writing crappy publications such as this. Go easy on him, he's shy.

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