Chords for An Awesome James Burton-Style Country Lick

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
[E] _ _ _ [B] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ _ [Gb] _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
[E] _ _ [Db] _ _ _ _ _
Hello there, I'm Adrian and in this lesson I'm going to be showing you how to play a super cool country lick
loosely in the style of somebody like James Burton, though it's not taken from any particular one of his recordings.
It's great fun to play and it's a really good phrase to have up your sleeve next time you find yourself
soloing in a country or a country rock kind of a context.
So let me show you how it's done.
As usual I'm going to put the full tab and music to this lick up on my website,
a link to which can be found underneath this video.
_ [Gb] So slowed down just a little bit, here's how the basic lick goes.
_ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
And I'm playing this up [Ab] in the 5th position and I'm starting off by bending the 7th fret on the 2nd string.
I'm going to do that using my 3rd finger.
I'm going to bend that note up 2 frets, [Ab] _ _ something like that.
[Eb] Notice I'm also supporting the bend with my index finger and my 2nd finger, so I'm actually pushing with all 3 fingers.
That's a good [G] habit to get into generally when you're bending strings, but particularly with this lick where we're going to be holding the bend
whilst we do other stuff, it's really [Ab] important to have a really solid bend that's supported with all your fingers.
So I'm going to bend that note up, _ then we're going to [Bb] hold the bend and as we're holding it we're going to put our little finger down
at the 7th fret on the 1st string and play that note.
Then we're going to pick the bent note again on the 2nd string. _ _
Then we're going to move our 1st finger, our index finger, down to the 5th fret on the 1st string.
We're still holding the bend, we've got to hold it here with just 2 fingers now.
We're going to play that [A] 5th fret note, _ then we're going to pick the bent note again on the 2nd string.
[Gb] This time we're going to release the [E] bend and pull off to the 1st finger at the 5th fret on the 2nd string.
So let me take you [G] through all of that once again slowly.
We're going to [Gbm] bend, _ [Abm] little finger down, pick the bent note again,
then [F] we're going to play the index finger on the 5th fret of the [A] 1st string, pick the bent note again, [Ebm] release [E] and pull off.
_ [Abm] _ _ [Bm] _ _ _ [Ab] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ Really important to try and get that bend in tune [N] as well, which is actually quite a difficult thing to do
particularly when you're holding the bend and playing the other notes.
So [Eb] really listen out for [Abm] when _
_ _ [E] you've got that bend [G] exactly in tune.
So that's the first part of the lick.
Another really important element of this lick is the right hand picking.
Now I'm playing it in the kind of James Burton style with a pick and fingers approach.
This is what a lot of [Gb] country players do just to get a bit of extra twang and snap into their licks.
So I'm playing the bent note on the 2nd string with the pick and then for the notes on the 1st string
I'm actually playing those with the middle finger of my right hand.
I'm actually _ giving them a little bit of a snap as well with my finger, _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[E] _ which really gives you that authentic kind of country sound.
So what _ we've got so far, the lick continues like this.
We're going [Db] to hammer on from the 6th fret to the 7th fret on the 3rd string
[D] _ _ using my 2nd finger and 3rd fingers.
[Gm] Then I'm going to play the 5th fret [E] on the 2nd string.
Then [D] I'm going to go back to the 7th fret on the 3rd string.
I'm going to pull off [Db] _ back down to the 6th fret on the same string.
[Bb] Then I'm playing the 7th fret on the [A] 4th string.
_ _ Then the [A] 5th fret on the 4th [G] string, _ [Ab] hammering on to the [E] 6th fret.
_ So [Db] that's the second part of the lick.
_ [D] _
_ [A] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ [G] _ [Ab] _ _ Again, I'm probably going to use a combination of pick and fingers to play this.
I'll start off [Db] with the pick, _
[D] then use my middle [E] finger,
_ [D] pick again [A] _
and pick again [Ab] for the last bit.
So it's just that one note on the B string there I'm playing with [B] my middle finger.
_ _ [Ab] _
_ [Dm] Last bit of the lick, I'm going to play the 7th [E] fret on the 5th string.
_ Then I'm going to play an open D string.
[D] _
I'm going to play that with my middle finger again, I [Bb] think.
And then [G] finally I'm going to hammer on from the 3rd fret to the 4th fret on the low E string.
[Ab] _
Then I'm going to [E] play the 2nd fret on the [B] 5th string.
And the [E] 2nd fret on the 4th string, playing both of those notes with my index finger.
And lastly, an open low E string.
If you like you can just play an open E chord there to finish [G] the lick off.
The entire lick slowly sounds like this.
[Abm] _ _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ One more time.
_ [Dbm] _
_ [A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ One more thing that you [Ab] can add in, again just to make it sound really authentic,
[G] is a little bit of muting with your right hand.
I think I'm doing that right at the start of the lick, I would play it something like this.
[Gb] _ _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ [E] _ So you hear for the [F] first few notes of the lick,
[E] _ _ just using a little bit of muting using the side of my right hand, [F] my picking hand,
just to give that authentic country chicken picking flavour.
So I [Gb] think I'm letting the 1st note, the bent note, [Abm] _ ring.
And then for the [Bb] 2nd, 3rd and 4th notes, _ [Gb] _ _ _ _
I'm just using a little bit of palm mute with my right hand.
Also really snapping those strings quite hard and that all adds to the flavour of the lick. _ _
_ _ [E] _ [D] _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
So that's about [Eb] it for this lesson, I hope you have a lot of fun playing this lick.
Remember that it is a lick designed to fit over a particular chord.
In this case it fits over an E chord or an E7 chord.
And then when the chord changes that you're playing over,
you're going to want to change where you play the lick as well.
And that's something I did right at the start of the lesson.
I started off playing in the 5th position _ and [E] _ that fits over the E chord.
[A] Then the harmony changed to an A chord and I [Bb] played it up in the 10th position,
[Db] _ _ [D] _
_ [A] _ _ where it will fit over an A chord or an A7 chord.
So that's something you're going to need to do if you want to make this lick fit over particular chord progressions
that you happen to be playing over.
As I said, have some fun with it and I hope to see you for more guitar lessons very soon.
Bye bye. _ _ _
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