If you’ve ever wondered how your favourite blues players build their lines or if you’ve ever tried to improvise but find that you just sound like you’re running scales, then this course will shed some light on how it’s done.

I’d like to start with a quote;

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Bruce Lee

This quote is one of my favourites, as it gets to the true meaning of mastery in many forms of art; Practice and internalisation of the basic components. There are also more interpretations, but this is a good one.

Now, if we substitute the word ‘Licks” for “Kicks” then maybe you’ll get an idea for what I’m about to talk about:

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 Licks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one Lick 10,000 times.”

This is exactly what this course is about. Have you ever noticed one of your favourite guitarists play similar licks in all their solos, but somehow they don’t all sound the same? For example, they place it differently, end it somewhere else every time, start on different beats, change the subdivisions, etc, etc.

Stevie Ray Vaughan is a prime example of this, you can count the licks he plays on one hand but never sounds like he’s repeating himself. This is because he has practiced those licks 10,000 times, they are a part of him now. He’s drilled them into his subconscious and now they are there on command in a magnitude of ways and he can manipulate them infinitely.

One of the paths to excelling in any musical style is learning the vocabulary; the language, the elements of the style, the repertoire. I’ve found that the best way to start developing your ability to sound like an authentic blues player is by hand selecting the blues fragments that you want to become a part of your playing. Then morphing them into your own ideas by being creative and critical of them.

When it comes to learning language and licks, there’s another great quote of Bruce Lee’s…

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

Enjoy the course, and happy hunting on your search for more Blues Bricks