Some licks are played so often because they’re genuinely perfect — and this is one of them. The Springboard is everywhere in blues guitar, from the records of the greats to the jam nights in your local pub, and learning it properly will give you one of the most versatile tools in your entire vocabulary.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: You’ll learn the Springboard lick — a three-note bend-based fragment that works as a pick-up, an ending, or a launchpad into dozens of other ideas — and start to understand why it’s such a chameleon.
What the Lick Actually Is
This is a three-note idea built around a bend on the G string. In the key of E, you’re bending up on the G string, hitting the note on the B string that you’ve just bent up to, and then barring across to hit the same fret on the high E string. It’s a shape that sits beautifully in the minor pentatonic position with its root on the sixth string — the foundation for all the bricks in this course.
Why It’s Called the Springboard
The name isn’t just a label — it describes exactly how this lick functions. So many players use it and then take it in completely different directions. You can end it anywhere, double it up, triple it up, run it back down. That’s why I call it the springboard lick: it launches you into other things, into anything you can come up with. It can be a pick-up, it can be an ending, it can lead to so many other bricks.
It’s the centrepiece of loads of Stevie Ray Vaughan songs like “Testify” or “Texas Flood.” That’s why I call it the springboard lick because so many players use it, and take it completely different places.
The Pentatonic Context
All of the bricks in this course are based around the minor pentatonic position with its root on the sixth string. Keeping that shape in mind will help you improvise in and out of the different positions and transpose everything to other keys. The tab below shows the lick in context; the diagram shows the full pentatonic shape it lives in.
Why You Should Learn a Cliché
So why learn a cliché? Because it always works, and the possibilities are endless. Those two things together make it invaluable — and they’re a rare combination. I dare you to find one blues jam where a guitarist doesn’t play this lick. I’ve even seen Gary Moore play it backwards. The best blues bricks all share this quality: they’re dependable and endlessly adaptable.
Taking it further: Once you’ve got the Springboard under your fingers, check out Bricks 2 and 3 — the Springbacks. They’re designed to complement this lick and lead you back into it, and working all three together will start showing you how blues vocabulary actually functions in real playing.
Your homework: Practise the Springboard lick in the key of E until you can play it cleanly at a comfortable tempo. Then try ending it three different ways — a sustain, a vibrato, and a slide off the top note — and notice how each one changes the feel of the phrase.