238658923659

122 Part II: Setting Up to Play the Blues TEAM LinG
You may hear the terms riff and lick used interchangeably in your blues guitar
career. But I like to think of a riff as more of a structural, repeatable phrase,
and a lick as a cliché, that is, a self-contained lead figure that doesn’t necessarily
have structural importance (like those short, snappy melodic phrases
played by blues and country guitar-players between vocal lines).
The signature guitar parts in the Stones’ “Satisfaction” and the Beatles’ “Day
Tripper” are classic examples of riffs. In blues, the crisp, ascending, horn-like
melodic bursts in Freddie King’s “Hide Away” are riffs as is the repeating pattern
in Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man.”
In the next few sections, you look at riffs in order of increasing rhythmic
activity, starting with quarter notes, advancing through eighth notes (the
straight, shuffle, and triplet varieties), and moving to the more complex 16-
note-based and syncopated riffs (which involve eighths and 16ths). Just as
you do when playing chords, you must play riffs with a solid and consistent
approach to articulation (attack), rhythm, and dynamics (overall loud and
soft) to help keep the drive in the guitar part.
Use a metronome to help keep yourself playing along with the beat, and use a
combination of your ears and muscle memory to make sure you strike the
strings with the same force for achieving consistent dynamics.
For the low-down bass notes:
Quarter-note riffs
You may think that you can’t do much to groove hard with the boring ol’ quarter
note, but the quarter note drives a lot of boogie-woogie basslines. Boogiewoogie
and blues are close cousins, and you can always throw in a boogie bass
as a variation to almost any medium- to uptempo shuffle. Figure 7-1 shows a
common quarter-note boogie pattern that you can play easily with just downstrokes.
Shuffle (qr=qce)
E7
Track 31, 0:00
Figure 7-1:
A boogie
bassline in
quarter
notes.
T
A
B
0 4
2 4
5 4 2
4