Do you want to make your blues guitar licks sound like the pros?
There is one specific thing you can do that will enhance your blues guitar playing without running scales everyday. Am I crazy? No. Well maybe a little, but you don’t have to practice scales all the time to improve this area of your blues guitar playing. Although, I can certainly tell you that it cannot hurt, and you should be doing this anyway. Anyways, so the #1 thing you can do to make your Blues Guitar solos sound pro is to develop a vocal-like vibrato.
Mastering vibrato when playing blues guitar will allow you to play less notes with more feeling. You will be able to emotionally connect with your listener with just one note. Yes, one note! All the blues guitar greats have excellent vibrato.
Here’s a list of some of my favorite blues guitarist’s vibrato.
- Albert Collins
- SRV
- Jimi Hendrix
- BB King
- Albert King
- Eric Clapton
- Otis Rush
All of these guitarists exhibit a commanding vibrato, and can change how their vibrato sounds depending on what kind of song you they’re playing over. Your vibrato can make or break your solos. If you sound out of tune when you vibrato, it will sound forced and lack emotion. There’s nothing worse than listening to out of tune vibrato.
In my new DVD, Blues Guitar DVD Method 3: Combining Scales, I show you how to combine vibrato, bending, raking, and combining scales to create some really powerful blues guitar solos.
What blues guitarist’s vibrato do you like most why?
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Vibrato is just one of those things that seems small but can make all the difference in the world. I’ve been working on my vibrato for a long time and it seems that I can somehow keep improving my technique.
Paul Kossoff of Free and B.B. King have the two greatest vibratos in blues music. Eric Clapton and Leslie West are close seconds.