The ending of a phrase matters as much as its beginning. “Tags” — the small ornamental endings that guitarists add to the tail of a lick or statement — are what give blues phrases their character, warmth, and personality. Curls and run-offs are two of the most common and effective of these tags.
What you’ll get out of this lesson: You’ll understand what curls and run-offs are, how to execute them cleanly, and how to use them to give your phrases a more finished, expressive, and distinctly blues-flavoured sound.
What Is a Tag?
A tag is a short ornamental phrase added to the end of a larger musical idea — like the final curl of a signature or the last word of a sentence that gives it inflection. In blues guitar playing, tags are often just one or two notes, but they’re the notes that tell you whether the phrase is asking, answering, confident, or hesitant. They’re the difference between a phrase that ends cleanly and one that ends expressively.
Curls: The Upward Flick
A curl — sometimes called an upward bend-and-release or a grace-note curl — is a small upward bend at the end of a phrase, typically a semitone or tone, immediately released back to the starting pitch. The result is a brief flicker of pitch above the note, giving it a vocal, almost laughing quality. In slow blues playing, curls add warmth and a sense of ease. They signal to the listener that the phrase is finished and that the player is relaxed and in control. Practise them slowly: the movement comes from the fretting finger pushing slightly across the string and releasing, without changing the basic fretting position.
Run-Offs: Descending to Silence
A run-off is the opposite impulse — a quick descending figure at the end of a phrase that trails the phrase downward and away. Like a speaker’s voice dropping at the end of a sentence, the run-off signals conclusion and creates a sense of the phrase settling. Run-offs often incorporate a few grace notes or a brief scale fragment, dropping two to four notes from the last main note of the phrase down toward the root or an open string. The speed matters: a run-off that’s too slow sounds deliberate; at the right speed it sounds natural and inevitable.
Taking it further: Experiment with combining a curl and a run-off on the same phrase — a tiny upward flick immediately followed by a brief descending tail. This gives phrases a rolling, conversational quality that is deeply idiomatic to the blues style.
Your homework: Take one two-bar blues phrase you already know and practise ending it three different ways: no tag, with a curl, and with a run-off. Record yourself doing all three and listen back. Notice how dramatically the emotional character of the phrase changes with just a small ornamental addition at the end.