Chords for B B King Guitar Technique in 5 Minutes

Hi guys, Dan from GuitarLessonCentral.com here and today I'm working with the guys from
RiffStation to bring you some free lesson videos.
Now in this lesson I'm going to show you how to play like B.B. King in 5 or 6 minutes.
Now of course that's quite a task but the idea really is just to give you a basic starting
point, a really good B.B. King inspired lick and a couple of ideas as to how to get your
technique up to the scratch of B.B. King when he was in his heyday and then basically you
can just absorb those ideas and really push forward after that.
So let's have a look at the lick first.
[Bb] _ _ _ _ _ [Db] _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ [N] _ [Bb] _ _
_ _ _ [G] _ [B] _ _ [Db] _ [Bb] _
[Eb] _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
[Bb] Okay so let's go through this really cool B.B. King inspired lick and basically we're
looking at B flat.
I see him playing B flat a lot so I thought we'd do something in there and it will also
help you kind of work some stuff out.
Now I've used a kind of cunning little guitar here which as you can see has got no dots.
Now I love this because it provides me a real challenge for my ear.
I appreciate it might be not as useful for you at the moment but I'm going to talk you
through what frets I'm on now.
I'm actually going to try and start in the major shape 4 and I'm going to do that by
taking this cage chord shape.
So hopefully you all know this kind of C shaped cage [E] chord and [Bb] that will give me [E] always my
major shape _ [Bb] 4.
Now this little finger is on the [Em] 13th fret.
This here, that's my [Bb] 12th fret okay.
So this is 13th fret, 12th and so on.
So I'm going to actually start by sliding from the 10th fret [Gm] to the 12th fret.
_ [Bb] Then grabbing the 11th fret [Eb] and then I'm going to do that cool little thing [Bbm] where I go [G] 14th
[Eb] fret E string back to [Bb] the root note of B flat.
_ _ _ Okay.
Now that is the start of my lick okay and that's a very sweet sound and then I follow
it by grabbing that note again and then I'm going to move from shape 4 into shape 5.
I'm going to do a little chromatic line from the 14th fret, that's the 14th fret to the
15th fret like that.
[Gm] _ [Fm] So that's pentatonic shape 5 I'm in here.
[Eb] Going to keep going up shape 5, that's _ 13th fret, 15th fret and then I'm going to grab
with my little finger the B flat note which is all the way up on the 18th fret and I'm
going to do this BB [B] King.
[E] _ Second time lucky.
Grab like that.
Well I want to hit this note but I want to rake through all the other strings first.
So [C] you can see I'm just kind of holding them all down just to [Eb] make them stop and I [Gb] slide
off like that. _
Okay so [Fm] that's [G] 10th fret to 12th fret [Bb] that's shape 4.
Then I'm going to go from the 11th [D] fret there 14th into 15th fret that's into the [Bbm] pentatonic
shape 5 [E] and _ [Bb] _ [Eb] come back down.
So in rhythm [Bb] let's imagine we've just had this kind of chord.
_ [Eb] _ [Bb] _
_ [Bbm] _ [Eb] _ _ [Gb] Ignore the dodgy note in the middle of [Bb] that.
_ That's better.
Now then we come back to our B flat down here so this is the 6th fret dominant 7th B dominant
7th chord there and we're going to start by taking [Db] our 9th fret which is in the minor
pentatonic [Bbm] shape 1 [G] and doing a semitone [Db] from [G] the minor 3rd to the major [Dbm] 3rd.
[G] Okay [Bb] and then drag all the way back to the 6th fret E [Eb] B then that's the 8th fret.
This is minor shape 1.
[Db] Hammer [D] on from the minor 3rd to the major [D] 3rd so that's [Bb] 6th fret to [Eb] 7th fret.
[D] _ [Bb] So you get.
_ [Gb] _ [D] _
Okay [Eb] now you're going to hit that there and then you [Bb] can even resolve down to the 8th
there [Eb] the root note the B [Bb] flat.
_ And then I'm just going to grab the kind of B flat major little triad chord there.
There's the 1st [F] 3rd and 5th and then I'm just going to rake through it to hit this 5th on
the top [Cm] and then go [Bb] back down the chord and [F] _
then it's like a little arpeggio a little
major arpeggio so I've gone [D] there's 6th fret [Bb] 7th fret [F] 8th fret 8th fret A [Eb] string minor
note [D] there and resolving down to the major 3rd note which is on the 5th [Bb] fret and there's
your B [F] flat.
Okay [Bb] [Eb] now [D] we don't need to resolve it to the B flat because we're playing the major 3rd
of B flat [Db] so it's a nice way to end the lick.
So you've got up here just to put you in the picture that there is the 9th fret [G] up to [Bb] the
10th [Eb] _ [Bb] _ _
_ _ [D] so all [Bb] together here's our chords.
Just going to [Eb] distinguish it with [Bb] chords and _ _ _ [Dbm] _ [Ab] _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [D] _ [Abm] there we have it.
Okay so with B.B. King I mean he is truly the blues master and I think any blues player
you watch from any time after B.B. [F] King was on the scene plays in some respect like B.B.
King.
I've picked up so much from B.B. King especially how to use the major pentatonic I find him
really good at doing these sweet [Eb] sweet [Bb] _ [Ab] _ [D] [Am] kind of major [Bb] sounds but for you just to get you
started especially if you're not in the world of blues yet not 100% I would say it's a really
good move to learn your dominant 7th arpeggios.
Just so that when you watch B.B. King play when you watch his licks yeah they can be
a little bit minor and your typical bluesy rock but more often than not they're very
distinguished and they're very kind of playing through the particular chord underneath so
if I've got this A7 he often plays through _ the 7th chord within his lick [Em] and [Ab] _ _ [D] _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _
_ always touching
upon these sounds so on the worksheet I've actually provided you with two shapes for
the _ _ _ A7 arpeggio which is a [Em] really cool little shape to learn.
Okay I'm not going to go through it with you now it's on the worksheet but that's a really
good step in the right direction to be able to play like B.B. King as well as that it's
his phrasing isn't it you just need to listen to him to understand how he's structuring
these sounds he plays as if he's telling you a story and he quite famously said that
on camera as well that you know he's playing a lick and he wants to tell a story with his
sounds it's not just about what can I do it's what do I choose to do for this particular
story which is a song okay so he's very very cool you might have guessed from me talking
about him that I love B.B. King but go away learn the lick learn those dominant 7th arpeggios
and you'll be on your way. _ _ _ _ _ _ _