These monster SRV guitar licks are from Anthony Stauffer’s 50 Monster SRV Guitar Licks You MUST Knowwhich delivers so much more than a versatile, head-turning collection of SRV-inspired lickage — the course reveals the underlying vocabulary, signature phrasing, right and left-hand techniques and harmonic approaches that power Stevie Ray Vaughn’s consummate chops and distinctive sound.
Overview: E Flat Tuning
This course is taught in E♭tuning. This was Stevie’s tuning of choice, and if you want to study his music, you’ll have to become adept at tuning down. Now on to the licks!
Monster SRV Lick #3: Core Four 2
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In this lick we’ll add one more foundational lick into our collection. We’ll combine it with the one that we learned in the previous segment and you’ll begin to see how these small interchangeable licks can be combined to create longer phrases.
Monster SRV Lick #4: Core Four 3
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Now we’ll add a third lick to the mix and combine it with the first two. You’ll notice the assembled licks are becoming slightly longer as we develop the ability to mix and match these small licks into longer sequences.
Monster SRV Lick #16: Pick It Up
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This lick fits at the same spot in the progression as the previous one, but the combination of techniques and the order we use them will make this lick very hard to pick cleanly.
Monster SRV Lick #18: Threes
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In this next section we’re going to focus on the song Pride And Joy. The tempo of this song is not great for playing extremely fast licks, so most of our difficulty comes in choosing licks with intricate picking.
This first lick requires some of the same motions we’ve already worked on, but we won’t be playing them at lightning speed. Instead, we’re going to lock into the rhythm, picking as many of the notes as we can to create a very rhythmic sound as we play. The lick starts right at Bar I of the 12-Bar progression.
Monster SRV Lick #39: Burnout
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The previous segment had a short burst of speed at the end. Now we’re going to play these 16th note triplets all the way to the end. We’re going to start the lick at Bar 9, then gradually slip into the 16th note triplets which we’ll play to end of the chorus, leaving just enough time for the turnaround.
Monster SRV Lick #41: Chop It Down
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In this short section we’ll be learning licks that fit with the song ‘Voodoo Child (slight return)’. There are two specific places in this song where Stevie played incredibly fast.
This first lick is inspired one of my favorite licks in SRV’s recording of this song, located towards the beginning of his solo. You can cheat by using hammer-ons, but if you can pick more notes, you’ll hear a much cleaner, more-defined attack.
Monster SRV Lick #49: More Faster
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Stevia rarely played at high speed for very long. We’re going to start with two subdued, very short licks to build anticipation. Then we’ll launch in to a much longer sequence that gradually builds in speed until we are playing as fast as we can for a song of this tempo.
Dig these monster SRV guitar licks? Download Anthony Stauffer’s 50 Monster SRV Licks You MUST Know for much more including tab, notation, and jam tracks!