Guess who's back, back again? There are a ton of blues exercises and techniques packed into this lesson – sorry Lee! This stuff is crucial for blues players, and learning it will take you into advanced soloing. You just need practice, practice, and more practice to nail it.

Huge Soloing Discovery

Lee has recently come to a huge discovery. In his jams with Pete, he noticed that he’s naturally been seeking to structure his solos on melody rather than scales and noodling. This is a huge step!

All the great players I’ve met say that they have a bag of tricks for when they’re not feeling inspired. They start with one of these phrases and build on it, trying to connect the rest of the solo to it. If you start a solo with a strong melody, you have a strong foundation for the rest of the solo.

Lee also commented that his solos and fills sounded wicked but were pretty simple. This is no problem. Most of the best guitar playing isn’t complicated.

💡The Journey – Get really comfortable with one box. As you build up a big blues vocab, all the positions and boxes blur together. You’ll be able to switch seamlessly while staying in the same area of the neck.

Playing The Major Pentatonic On Each Degree of The Blues

Before Lee and I went further on this, I wanted to look at a soloing technique we had skipped over: playing the Major Pentatonic from each degree in the blues. This means using A Major Pentatonic over A, D Major Pentatonic over D, and E Major Pentatonic over E.

To do this, we took Lee’s pet A Major Pentatonic lick (see TAB) and moved it into different keys. In D, you use the same shape but start on 5:5, and in E you start at 5:7. Lee used this lick as a starting point for his solos.

|---------------| 
|---------------| 
|-----------2-2-|
|-------2-4—----| 
|-0-2-4---------|
|---------------|

You can take this further by using the A Minor Pentatonic as a base and moving into the A, D, or E Major Pentatonic over each chord.

To summarise, on the A7 chord, you can play A Minor Pentatonic, the A Blues Scale, A Major Pentatonic, or A7 Arpeggio.

On the D7 chord, you can play D Major Pentatonic or A Minor Pentatonic. And on the E7 chord, you can use E Major Pentatonic or A Minor Pentatonic.

🎸 Making The Changes – I have a Making The Changes Series that takes you through how to mix Major and Minor Pentatonics in a blues, leading all the way to the infamous Arpeggiator!

Awesome Blues Lick!

This is an essential Major Pentatonic box, and you can use it to make the changes. Here’s the shape in the key of A:

|-------–—-5--7-| 
|----5--7-------| 
|-6-------------|
|----------—----| 
|---------------|
|---------------|

If you move all the notes up five frets and start at 3:11, you’re in D, and the first note of the shape in E is 3:13.

You can bend the top note of this shape (1:7) one tone to the Major 3rd, which will sound great over A. Lee tried a tone bend from 2:7 over the A chord, which is bending F# (the 6th) to G# (Major 7th). This note clashes with the A7 and doesn’t sound good. What you can do is bend 2:7 one semitone to get G, the b7. This one is awesome!

💣 Push The Boundaries – Force yourself out of your usual licks by focusing on the thinnest string of this box, trying as many riffs as possible.

During the demo jam, Lee struggled to make the final E in the sequence. An easy way out of that is to jump to a chord! Or you can even take a short break. 🙂 When you’re practicing, I suggest you try hard to make the changes. If the music is too fast, slow it down.

Legato Lick

I love Lee’s style. He has lovely vibrato and beautiful phrasing. I think he could become an even better player by playing longer lines and adding repeating phrases to his solos.

A great way to do this is to develop a solo, using your bag of melodic tricks, then moving into a repeating section. The other instruments then change the harmony while you stay on that lick.

To help him do this, we’ll explore some legato licks in the A Minor Pentatonic Scale.

Four-In-A-Line Legato

Start with finger 3 on 1:8 (string 1, fret 8). Pick, then flick off to fret 5. Move to string 2 and do the same. Then continue, only picking the first note of each flick-off and any notes played individually.

|-8f5–----5—--------------------------------------------------------------| 
|-----8f5---8f5–--8f5—----5—----------------------------------------------| 
|---------------7-----7f5---7f5---7f5-----5—------------------------------|
|-------------------------------7-----7f5---7f5—--7f5—----5—--------------| 
|-----------------------------------------------7-----7f5---7f5---7f5—----|
|---------------------------------------------------------------8—----8f5-|

Make sure you practice this slowly at an even tempo. If you practice it “lumpy” (with fast flick-offs) it will also sound lumpy when you speed up!

Always use the rolling technique when you play consecutive notes on different strings on the same fret. That way, the two notes don’t ring out together. This is a perfect technique to practice when you have a spare two minutes. But if you have extra time, here’s a more thorough one.

Minor Pentatonic Exercise

This is the minor-pentatonic version of the 3rds and 4ths exercises for the Major scale. It’s great for practicing the rolling technique. I usually call this one Playing the Minor Pentatonic in 4ths, but technically you play a mixture of 3rds and 4ths. Remember it as playing the notes vertically next to each other in the pentatonic scale.

|-----------------------------------------------------5-----8--|
|-----------------------------------------5-----8--5-----8-----|
|-----------------------------5–----7--5-----7—----------------|
|-----------------5-----7--5-----7-----------------------------|
|-----5-----7--5-----7-----------------------------------------|
|--5-----8-----------------------------------------------------|

You’ll notice that you jump strings on the same fret several times. Use the rolling technique, playing the first note with the fingertip and rolling it down onto the next string, muting the previous one with your finger.

Do the opposite when you play the higher note first: the finger starts flat, then rolls on to the tip. And make sure you mute the string above the one you’re fretting.

Another effect of this exercise is that it opens your possibilities for melody building. Many guitarists feel limited when they play the Minor Pentatonic scale. For instance, from the note A at 4:7, we’re very likely to play 4:5 or 3:5 next, but not 5:7. Modern blues uses this technique loads. It's tricky, but it gives licks a hip sound.

🧐 Guitar Maladies – If you suffer from going-too-fast-itis (that’s a technical term), use a metronome! :)

Positive Finger Placement

Eric Johnson did a DVD called Total Electric Guitar. He’s a total guitar nerd! In it, he talks about positive finger placement and claims that how you place your finger on the fret is crucial for getting a perfect note.

I spent a whole afternoon trying to figure out if this made a difference, and I concluded that it did! Part of the trick is using the point of the tip rather than the soft bit.

I think the mind plays a part here. Somehow, when we have a good connection with the finger, we can feel it, and it comes across in the sound. Another trick to this is the thumb. You have to move your thumb around the back when you move to the thicker strings. Otherwise, you won’t get good finger contact.

3-In-A-Line Legato

This exercise is the same as the four-in-a-line exercise except we only descend three notes each time.

|-8f5–--5—--------------------------------------------------------| 
|-----8---8f5–--8f5---5—------------------------------------------| 
|-------------------7—----7f5-7f5---5-----—-----------------------|
|---------------------------------7---7f5-7f5---5—----------------| 
|---------------------------------------------7---7f5-7f5---7-----|
|---------------------------------------------------------8---8f5-|

Again you have to play this slow and clean before speeding up. Fast and sloppy always sounds sloppy – if you want to play fast, start off slow!

When you ascend the scale, use hammer-ons. Start on 6:5 with finger 1, pick it, hammer on to fret 8, then roll on to 5:5 with finger 1, and so on.

Fast Blues Legato Lick

We also explored another fast lick that’s useful across the fretboard in blues. Let’s start at 1:5.

|-5h8f5----| 
|--------8-| 
|----------|
|----------| 
|----------|
|----------|

Make sure finger 1 is touching string 2 so that the open B string doesn’t ring out when you remove finger 3 from 2:8. You only pick twice: on the first 1:5 and on 2:8.

Try to get used to playing it for a long time, like for a whole minute. See where you can use this same lick or variations of it in your playing. Another option in the key of A is to use this same pattern with 3:2, 3:4, and 4:4.

Homework

Lee is full to the brim after that lesson! Here are his exercises for next time:

i) 12-Bar Blues with Major Pentatonic off All Three Notes
ii) Mix In A Minor Pentatonic
Playing in 4ths With Rolling
Three-in-a-line Legato

We'll see Lee in a couple of weeks. I should have a better setup so we can do some recording with him. Laters :)

🎸 Check out my Advanced modules to take your guitar playing to the next level.