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Lead On!
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Fire up a rockabilly-style lead over a classic Merle Haggard song
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By mixing and matching these three licks and their various endings we can play a short solo over the A–E–D–A progression, as in Example 11.
  Example 11
Example 11, Played Slowly
You may have noticed that all these licks use fretted notes, even when a note is available on an open string. While this is in direct violation of Dave’s Lazy Guitarist’s Guidelines for Fretboard Relaxation, there is a greater purpose at work here. By keeping everything fretted, we create licks you can use in any key. Move one of these A-major pentatonic licks up five frets so it starts on the seventh fret and you’ve got yourself a shiny new D-major pentatonic lick using the exact same phrasing and fingering. How’s that for efficiency? With one simple move, you can take all the licks you’ve learned here and play them over a song in D, or any other key, just by traveling the right distance up or down the fretboard.
Now let’s try a few moves where the first note is the one that changes. Start by taking Example 12 out for a spin.
Example 12
Example 12, Played Slowly
This will work over an A or D. To make it work over an E, start two frets up on the same string, as in Example 13.
Example 13
Example 13, Played Slowly
Example 14 shows how you might run these two licks together over the first two measures of our four-bar chord progression. We’ll end in measures 3 and 4 with a major-pentatonic run over the D chord, ending on the A note right when you hit the A chord.
Example 14
Example 14, Played Slowly
When a song stays on the same chord for two measures, you’ve got time for a more extended scale run. Example 15 starts with a measure of notes at the high end of the scale, then ends in measure 2 with a bending lick similar to ones you’ve already played.
Example 15
Example 15, Played Slowly
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