CHORD-BASED LICKS, Steve Cropper-style

Most guitar instruction on “how to solo” focuses on scales and scale-based licks. Most lead guitarists, regardless of genre (rock, country, r&b, jazz, bluegrass) play scale-based solos, but they often base their solos on CHORDS, rather than scales - even when playing single-note licks. There is very little written about this technique in guitar literature, but all the great soloists do it.

There are several approaches to chord-based soloing, and I’m going to try to illuminate one of them. I first became aware of it listening to Bob Dylan’s lead guitarist (Bruce Langhorne) on the 1965 Bringing It All Back Home album, on songs like “She Belongs To Me,” “Love Minus Zero” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” Then I recognized it in Steve Cropper’s licks on “Hold On I’m Comin’” and in James Burton solos or Eagles solos.

It’s a two-note system often called “sixths,” which I think is a misnomer, but never mind! It all starts with this common key-of-E blues turnaround (use your thumb & index finger to pick the pair of notes, or a flatpick and middle finger): (Watch & listen to all these licks on youtube, as indicated.)

see & hear it here: https://youtu.be/6bVLrrZnWXc

If you played that same lick in F (which is E “up one fret”) it’d look like this:

see & hear it here: https://youtu.be/x8PFaRWGync

Since the F chord shape is moveable, you can play that lick, and similar ones, for any chord (see & hear it here: https://youtu.be/WXRzd7FaUYw)

As those examples illustrate, you can play the two notes together, or separate them, and you can play an ascending lick or descending…in fact, there are an infinite number of variations. The idea is to FOLLOW THE CHORD CHANGES, PLAYING F FORMATIONS, and build licks off those F formations. Here’s an example of using those licks to play backup to the folk/blues, “Corrine Corinna.” I’m singing and playing lead guitar licks in this clip, but there should be a rhythm guitar, strumming chords. There are three chords in this blues, E (in which I use the turnaround lick & variations of it), A (in which licks are based on the F formation at the 5^th fret, because that’s an A chord) and B7 (in which licks are based on the F formation at the 7^th fret, a B chord). See & hear it here: https://youtu.be/iX_JtGmAqIM

In that sample, the lead guitar is playing fills, during pauses in the vocal. Sometimes a solo is based on these licks, but more often the F-formation licks are sprinkled into a solo that’s based on other strategies…usually chord-based ones.

There are many more solos and backup lead guitar parts illustrating how to use this technique in my Fretboard Roadmaps book/CD (2^nd edition) and the DVD of the same name, and in the book/CD Fretboard Roadmaps for Acoustic Guitar…all those are on my website, sokolowmusic.com. Feel free to email me with questions.