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When you start playing the guitar, or any instrument, you usually end up choosing a style or genre on which to focus. Blues, jazz, R&B, and rock might be some genres that come to mind when starting out on the guitar initially. But, if you take the time to break all of these genres down, you’ll notice they are all fundamentally connected in some ways. One way is that they all boil down to the use of just 12 notes. We separate by genre based on the ornamentation of each style.

In his course, 30 Fearless Single-Note Licks You MUST Know, Carl Verheyen lets you in on 30 licks that he uses to make your playing stand out in any style you are trying to learn.

Here are seven video guitar lick lessons from the course. For the full course, check out Carl Verheyen’s 30 Fearless Single-Note Licks You MUST Know on TrueFire!

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Thumb Start Dominant d: Lick 12


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Because we electric guitarists hook our left hand thumb over the neck as a pressure point to bend against, I take advantage of it for playing notes on my low E string.

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Sliding Up: Lick 5


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Here’s a dominant 7 lick that you can play. This one moves up the fingerboard by sliding with the first, second, and third fingers.

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Open Major Minor: Lick 14


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Here’s a way to make pentatonic major and minor scales more interesting and open up your range. The open G enables you to cover some ground while maintaining a chromatic descent.

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Bluegrass Hybrid: Lick 18


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This is an open string bluegrass/country line for the key of G that gets right to the heart of the style…flat 5 next to natural 5, and flat 3rd next to major 3rd.

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Minor Barnburner: Lick 25


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Descending pentatonics that reveal a super fast way to climb down the neck. Practice starting on some of the other E string notes instead of the root. Starting up a minor 3rd on G works just as well.

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Major Minor Slide Lick: Lick 29


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Setting myself up for a typical major pentatonic blues lick and then bending up to the root is the plan here. But I ending slide guitar style by squeezing out a compound bend lick to finish it off. I’m sure I learned it from a slide player somewhere…

Single-Note Lick Guitar Lesson – Taylor’s Blues: Bonus Performance


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Here’s how Lick 4 sounds in the rest of the tune. It’s a simple “jump blues” progression I picked up from the Chicago cats. Some stop time hits are followed by a shuffle groove at the IV chord. The solos are all on a slow change blues progression in C.

Digging these free video guitar lick lessons? Check out Carl Verheyen’s full course, 30 Fearless Single-Note Licks You MUST Know on TrueFire.