Singing the blues – at least singing your licks

A top tip my guitar teacher gave me is that top blues players can always ‘sing their licks’.

If you think about it, it makes sense. If you can’t hear in your head what you want to play  before you play it, what you’ll produce will be a bit random!

My teacher would literally hum the licks he wanted to play as he played them.

When I started doing the same I noticed two things.

First, at the start, I couldn’t remember my licks well enough to be able to hum them. This explained why I found it so hard to play them. I couldn’t even remember what they were meant to sound like so what chance did I have?

Second, once I actually started ‘learning’ how the licks go, and remembering them, I could ‘sing’ them and it made a massive difference to the ease of playing them.