Bluesy Rhythm Fills and Licks

by Christopher Sung One of the great aspects of playing blues or R&B is complementing a soloist or singer with some tasteful rhythm fills. Jimi Hendrix (among others) excelled at this type of playing, and he often used it to carry the tune in between his vocal phrases. If you've looked at the "Little Wing"-like example in my Jim Hendrix Type Licks lesson, the following pages explain a lot about how this style of rhythm playing works, and how you can absorb it into your own playing.

Let's take a typical C-F progression. The key of the tune is C major, and we're going to examine how to embellish both the C major chord and the F major chord with some bluesy R&B fills. Listen to the example below to get a taste of what it sounds like. Don't worry about getting it down just yet, because we're going to dissect what's going on in the pages to come...