The Snake

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This is a lick I named “The Snake” because it has an aggressive yet sneaky sound to it that gets the listener’s attention. It’s a great lick to know when you’re jamming with your friends to really turn some heads. Plus, it can be applied to different styles and situations.

But I’m not just going to limit learning the lick to a “put your finger here then put your finger there” type of lesson. I’m going to show you the music theory behind the lick too so that you’ll know why it sounds great. This will broaden your knowledge in a way that just learning a lick “finger-by-finger” couldn’t. You’ll find it will improve your musicianship in general.

Then I’ll show you how to play it along with a jam track too so you’ll be prepared to use it in real jam situations outside of just practicing it.

Tabs:

First, get the basic note sequence down.  Play all notes the same length.

Next, practice staying on certain notes longer than others to give it more of a dramatic feel.  In these examples hold the notes that are quarter notes in the traditional music notation.  For those of you who can read traditional notation I have put more space between the held notes in the tabs.

Now lets try repeating certain parts of the lick to make it sound less like a sequence of just a few notes.  The repeated sequences are shown in separate bar lines here so you can recognize them more easily.

Lastly, we combine the concepts of repeating and holding notes to make it sound really interesting.

Remember these are just a few of the dozens of possibilities that you could come up with using this sequence of notes I call “The Snake”!