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These blues rock guitar licks are from Jeff McErlain’s 50 Blues Rock Guitar Licks You MUST Know. This course features a handpicked collection of licks, riffs, and rhythmic patterns in various styles to develop the techniques and vocabulary you’ll need to unleash soulful lines and to take your blues rock guitar playing to the next level.

Blues Rock Guitar Lick #15: Teja’s

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This is one of the coolest little moves, I never get tired of playing it or hearing it. I first heard it from Eric Johnson as many of us did I believe, then after hearing more Austin based players it seems it’s in the water down there. The 3rd of a chord is really the most important, it tells us if the chord is major or minor. In the blues, we want the sound in between those two. Not quite the flat 3rd not quite the natural 3rd. That ambiguity is at the core of the blues. Here we are playing the b3rd and bending it up slightly almost to the natural 3rd while laying on the root an octave below.

Blues Rock Guitar Lick #20: Southern Comfort

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One of the hallmarks of Southern Rock is the use of the major tonality, more specifically Mixolydian. Mixolydian is the scale that is used over a dom7 chord and it creates a happy yet bluesy quality. Many people associate this sound with jam bands and Southern rock classics like Jessica, Blue Sky, and of course Sweet Home Alabama. A cool thing to see is that the major pentatonic scale can be found inside of a mixolydian scale so, wherever you can use mixo you can use the major pentatonic based on the same root.

Blues Rock Guitar Lick #26: Shake It!

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I love Angus Young. His tone, approach, phrasing, vibrato, and control over the guitar always impresses me. In a way he is such a simple old school player based in the blues, but he has a way of making it his own. Even when he plays an old style blues lick he makes it sound fresh. Like many other players, I hear a lot of old Eric Clapton in his playing. Can you blame him?

Blues Rock Guitar Lick #36: EVH Move

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I was driving in the car the other day and I’m The One from Van Halen I came on, man I almost forgot how amazing a player Eddie is. I said almost, but you know how it is, you don’t listen to someone for a while and then you hear them out of the blue and the genius jumps out at you. As we know Eddie’s chops make him quite a daunting player to dig into, that’s why I chose this lick and slowed it down a bit. Often the trick to a lick is the fingering and that is definitely the case here. Do me a favor and put on Van Halen I today, it is as good as you remember it.

Blues Rock Guitar Lick #49: The Staple

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Here is a must know blues rock staple, this lick is as old as the blues itself and still as cool. Here I am using it the way Eric Clapton did on Spoonful. Really dig into this one with the pick so the strings snap. Don’t be afraid to keep on repeating it as well, it’s one of those licks that seems the more you play it the cooler it gets.

Dig these blues rock guitar licks? Download Jeff McErlain’s 50 Blues Rock Guitar Licks You MUST Know for much more including tab, notation, and jam tracks!