If you’ve ever watched B.B. King play closely, you’ll see he often plays in a very specific fretboard position within a key. This position if often called the B.B. King Box because he pretty much plays all his licks from this position. Or he at least starts them there. It’s his “home base.”
And the beauty of the position is once you learn it, you can apply it to thousands of other blues songs. It’s also pretty easy to learn.
There are other “boxes” for playing leads and scales (see this page), but B. B.’s is a little different. It’s pretty much a major pentatonic position but he adds plenty of other notes to keep in interesting depending on what chord he is playing over.
He plays the root note with his pointing finder on the B string, with that signature vibrato. So in the key of A that would be on the 10th fret. The position is much like in the major pentatonic from the page above, but it’s based around that root note on the B string. It includes a bend up to the third that sounds very “bluesy.” Once you hear it you’ll know what I mean.
And once you know the position, the B.B. licks will just start flowing out.
