Here’s another lick that incorporates some hybrid picking, this time in the key of A. Again I have transcribed this in triplets as I think it’s easier to describe for you.
We start on beat four of the first bar in shape one of the A minor pentatonic scale at the G note at the eighth fret of the B string with a downstroke up to the A at the seventh fret of the E string with an upstroke. We then pluck the C at the eighth fret of the E string with our third finger. You could also use your second finger here, I just prefer to use my third. From here we use our second finger to perform a semitone pre-bend bend at the F# at seventh fret of the B string, giving us some dorian flavours. We pre-bend up to the G and down to the F#, pulling off to the E at the fifth fret over the course of one beat in triplets, or one note per triplet as per the rest of this lick.
We then continue down the A minor pentatonic scale pulling off from the D to the C at the seventh and fifth frets of the G string down to the A at the seventh fret of the D string. We then go back to the G string and hammer on from the C to the C# at the fifth and sixth frets giving us a nice bluesy change from major to minor (C & C# being the major and minor thirds of A), before jumping back down to G the seventh note of A at the fifth fret of the D string. We complete this bar by going further down the A minor pentatonic scale with a pull off from A to G at the seventh and fifth frets of the D string finishing on the E at the seventh fret of the A string.
The final bar in this lick starts with a hammer on and pull off at the D and E flat notes at the seventh and eighth frets of the G string, going down to the C at the tenth fret of the D string and then hammering back on from the D to the E flat on the G string and sliding into and picking the E note at the ninth fret and simultaneously picking the C# at the ninth fret of the high E string with our third finger. This outlines an A major chord with E being the fifth, and C# being the third. You could also think of it as a D shape A chord with the A root note at the tenth fret of the B string, or the seventh fret of the D string.
There are several other options to incorporate hybrid picking into this lick I just highlighted the two that I implement into my playing.
