FEATURE } VIDEO MASTERCLASS
5 Texas Blues Licks
We invited the San Antonio-born blues master to record five of his favourite Texas blues licks. Prepare to turn up the heat, with Jon Bishop as your guide.
In this feature we welcome Texas blues master Chris Duarte. Chris fronts his own power trio whose new album, Ain’t Giving Up, is out now on Provogue Records.
In his specially recorded video Chris demonstrates five licks at varying tempos, so no backing track is used (with the exception of lick 4, which is played to a click). To keep things simple we have kept things in 4/4 time signature with all the rhythms being approximate to what is implied. The groove here is shuffle style so the eighth notes maintain a swung feel. The licks are mostly based around B Minor Pentatonic scale (B-D-E-F#-A) with some colour tones added here and there. Example 4 is a turnaround idea in B Major so this one employs a BMajor key signature.
As the licks are performed without a backing there is no specific harmonic context, but for reference we have written in the implied chords, or the chords one could expect to hear under the licks. It is also worth noting that in the world of blues-rock, our B Minor Pentatonic licks will also work perfectly over the B7 chord family.
The longer passages in the licks are constructed from classic Texas Blues style mini phrases. Each tried and tested piece of vocabulary can be stitched together to create larger, more complex lines. As Chris explains, these are created ‘in the moment’ so it was hard to play with no backing or other musician to react to.
All of the phrases fit into the familiar framework of B Minor Pentatonic fingerings, but Chris adds extra colour tones, the most notable being the b5th interval (F) so as to create B Blues scale (B-D-E-F-F#-A).The 2nd (C#) and the Minor 2nd (C) are also classic embellishments found in blues.
As we’d expect, Chris demonstrates several common blues guitar techniques including string b
