Vocabulary pack · past the box

Advanced Blues Moves

24 original licks built from the techniques most players never reach — oblique bends, enclosures, superimposed pentatonics, diminished-over-V, behind-the-nut, sliding 6ths. All in A (blues / A7–D7–E7) so they're transposable. Tap to hear the articulation; the bends actually glide.

Playback key: · speed
Reading the audio: b = bend (glides up) · pb = pre-bend (starts bent, you hear it release) · ~ = vibrato · h/p = hammer/pull · sl = slide · () = ghost/grace. Tab is in A position (5th-fret area) unless noted. Change the playback key up top — fingering stays, pitch moves.

ABend craft — the hard stuff

Bends beyond "bend up a tone." Obliques, pre-bends, unison and behind-the-nut — where intonation separates players.

BChromatic & enclosure

Approaching chord tones from both sides — the jazz-blues move that makes lines sound deliberate instead of scalar.

CSuperimposition — pentatonics over the chord

The Robben Ford / Larry Carlton secret: play a different pentatonic than the key to spell the chord's colour tones. This is the big one.

DDiminished & altered over the V

The dominant chord wants tension. Half-whole diminished and altered tones give you the outside sound that resolves perfectly home.

EDouble-stops & sliding 6ths

Two notes at once — the horn-section, Curtis-Mayfield, Robben-Ford comping-into-soloing vocabulary.

FTurnarounds & endings

The last two bars — where the whole solo gets its punctuation. Chromatic, triplet, and ending moves.