Hi Gordon,
Not at all as far as I’m concerned, the open strings sound a little bit fuller when I play them open on my electric … but it doesn’t matter that much (or at all if I didn`t knew it) … so if this goes much easier for you I would say “go for it”
Greetings…
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@roger_holland
Thanks Rogier. I’m sure it’s a case of “if it sounds good, it is good”. I’ve been sliding into those notes on my acoustic and I think it sounds good.
It’s a blues lick so hopefully Justin would approve of me doing my own thing. 
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Is he not just walking up from the G# to the E for the outro melody? With all the notes played taken from the chord/scale?
Looking at the lesson page he does say to make it your own.
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I’m guessing it sounds better sliding into the note. Bravo
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When I first opened this lesson and saw Justin play it, I thought I’ll never be able to do this.
It’s still a mile away from Justin’s level, but I’m making headway with it and can now play it end-to-end with a few stumbles along the way.
It feels possible and that’s such a great feeling. I’m so glad I stuck with the guitar and kept at it.
I’ll never be able to do what Justin does but that’s ok. I’m making progress and enjoying the journey 
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I have GuitarPro, but I first learned the rhythm by playing Justin’s intro at 3/4 speed and tapping out the 4:4 rhythm with my foot and counting as I played through a few times. It helps me to get the rhythm for each of the licks in my mind at first before I play.
BTW, when I printed out the pdf, my printer must have smudged the notes in measure 21 (the sliding dyads), because I thought I was seeing 3 quarter notes, but I knew that couldn’t be right, so I had to check the pdf on my computer screen to see the last note was a half note in length, the only half note in the song. (The Sliding Dyads could be the name of a band, but it would be a bit of an inside joke among guitarists).
This is a great practice song with several blues elements and I’ve played on all my guitars, even my classical guitar.
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I enjoy that lesson. Is there another grade 3 song like that to learn ?
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Hi, would it be possible to upload a file in a format that we can load in TuxGuitar? As it’s free…
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I am very confused with this lesson/the concept of solos, rhythm, and licks. I have many questions like:
What scales do we use to solo over a specific note/chord/rhythm?
Can we solo for 4 bars straight and if so, lets say we are on the last 4 bars of the 12 bar blues where there are 4 different notes. Are we going to switch between the scales whilst soloing?
Why do we start or finish rhythms/leads/sections on beats 1 or 2 or more?
And on the ‘B Chorus 1’ part of the tab for the last bar (B7) why is the first note the 1st fret on the 3rd string (G#) whilst it is not in the E or B minor pentatonic scales and don’t seem to be following a chromatic scale?
Can we change when we want to solo, lick, and play rhythm, if so when and how do we do that?
How do we know if i can play a lick and when not to play a lick? - Same goes for a solo.
How do we go back into a rhythm?
What exactly are rhythms, leads, and sections?
I have done EVERY single lesson of Justin guitar up to this point with clarity and no confusion. But this topic is hard to understand. Please help. Blues is one of my top genres of music and i really love the idea of soloing and having a good feel to it. Please explain this too me so i can fully understand this and please give me tips on how to practice the things i can’t understand/need to learn.
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I can try to answer some of your questions. Let’s start here:
In this context “rhythm” refers to the part played on the bass strings, the chunka-chunka as Justin sometimes calls it. “Leads” refers to a series of single notes, often (as here) played on the higher strings. A “lick” is a short lead phrase, while a “solo” puts a number of licks together to create a longer section. A solo might last for the 12-bars of a 12-bar blues, for example.
In this piece, there are licks interspersed with bits of rhythm playing.
At this beginning level, you will use only 1 scale, in this case the Em pentatonic. Sometimes notes outside the scale are also included, as you have noticed.
BTW, you mention “4 different notes” in the last 4 bars of the 12-bar blues. You mean chords, not notes, it’s important to understand this distinction. Furthermore, there are only 3 different chords, not 4, although there is a chord change for each bar, which is probably what you meant.
In this bit, you play a G natural, followed by a G#. This is a move from the minor third to the major third (of the E major scale), which is a very typical move in the blues. You should think of this as still playing Em pentatonic, but with an extra note thrown in.
Justin suggests starting the licks on beat 2 of the bar as the easiest way to start out doing this sort of thing. You play the first beat of the bar as a bass note (the rhythm) and then insert a lick that lasts for 3 beats. Then you are ready to play another bass note on beat 1 of the next bar.
Once you feel comfortable doing this, you can experiment: you can start the lick on another beat of the bar, or you can play a lick that goes into the next bar, for example. However, this is harder and you should be very solid with the piece Justin has tabbed here before trying the harder stuff.
This is crucial – to keep in time and get back to the rhythm without hiccups. This is what this lesson is about, basically. Getting back to the rhythm is just playing the bass notes at the right time. You do it by making sure you keep the count going in your head while you play the lick in order to get back to the bass strings at the right time. If you follow Justin’s instruction in the video, you should get it.
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I don’t see this as a lesson about soloing. It’s more about mixing single note licks into the rhythm.
You shouldn’t be thinking “how to get back to the rhythm”, the licks need to be played on the same chunka/shuffle rhythm. Justin stresses this in the lesson and is probably why he starts the licks on beat 2.
In the last two bars of Chorus 1, the E7 chord carries over into the first 2 beats of the last bar. B7 is written above the B note in the lick which finishes with a B7 strum.
So…apart from that last half bar, all the licks are played over E7 using the Eminor pentatonic scale with one or two ‘colour’ notes thrown in.
Sounds great don’t you think?
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Thank you so much for this explanation reading this made things make more sense, but im still confused on how to solo/ use licks because in the tabbed version justin uses other scales to make the licks/solo. Are we just meant to use the e minor pentatonic for now?
Yes, thank you for your reply. I was just a little confused on the stuff around this topic like how certain things are meant to be played.
Also are we going to learn “color” notes soon?
@roby2 , so the main focus of the lesson is to learn Justin’s tabbed out set piece. In some sense, you don’t even need to know what scale is used, etc, you just learn the piece.
I see that late in the video Justin talks about making up your own licks and maybe that is what you are thinking of. If that is the case, I would suggest starting with the Em pentatonic scale to build your licks. You can get a lot of music out of the open Em pentatonic scale.
@roby2
Colour notes is simply another way of saying off scale notes. They add a different, maybe unexpected sound. It is after all the Blues. Expressive!
Yea youre right. I was fixated on the last part of the video. I was just thinking i was behind because he is using scales other than the em pentatonic, and “color” notes in the tab, and he was talking about soloing. It just caught me a bit off guard because we havent really gotten into that yet. I love blues (SRV) and i want to master this, what are your tips on how to really approach this well?
I’m not really qualified to give advice, since I’m still learning this stuff myself, but here’s what I think:
I’m not sure what your current level is, but I would not worry about choice of scales or color notes or any of that stuff, but rather focus on technique. For the set pieces (like this one or the ones in Justin’s “Blues Studies” module), learn how to play them. Get the feeling of them under your fingers. If you want to try your hand at some improvisation while doing these pieces, sure, go for it. But stick to the minor pentatonic (or the blues scale, which adds 1 note to the minor pentatonic).
(BTW, I guess I’m assuming you’ve done the blues lessons in Grade 2.)
You could investigate Justin’s “Blues Lead” module (in Grade 4, I think), which teaches blues licks using the Am pentatonic/blues scale and also techniques like string bending, vibrato, etc.
Note that Justin doesn’t teach going beyond the blues scale until much further along – in Grade 6.
Another question. How do we know if we are back on the beat when switching back and forth to rhythm and lead? Would it having a ‘good feel’ be the main determination of us knowing we are on beat?
also what does this mean? - " #2 Start & Finish on Beat 1
Make sure that you finish whatever section they’re on a beat one. Then move into the change, whether it’s the lead or the rhythm. I wouldn’t recommend starting the rhythm on beat two for some time. Concentrate on finishing the rhythm on beat one for now. Do some lead line, and come back on beat 1 for the rhythm to keep you on track."