4 Approaches to Soloing over a 12-Bar Blues Progression

[Music] hey what's up guys brian kelly here from zombie guitar in this video i want to give you four different approaches to soloing over a 12 bar blues progression so the first two approaches are more beginner based approaches you've probably seen these before you're probably using them currently if you've been playing for you know a couple years or whatever the third and fourth approach is really where the magic starts to happen the third and fourth approach is going to be where you start to combine major and minor tonalities and that's really like the heart and soul of blues blues is really combining major and minor together and you know i think you're going to really like it so the first approach is going to be where we just take one single scale it's going to be the a minor pentatonic scale and play that scale over the entire progression so one scale over all of the chords there's going to be three chords that we're solving over a d and e so a minor pentatonic over all three of those chords the second solo or the second approach is going to be where you take one pentatonic scale for each chord so over the a chord you're going to use the a minor pentatonic scale over the d chord you're going to use the d minor pentatonic scale over the e chord you're going to use the e minor pentatonic scale so that's the second approach the third approach is where we're going to take one pentatonic scale for each chord but we're going to heavily focus on the chord tones of the dominant seventh chord so over the a chord you're going to focus on not only the a minor pentatonic scale but you're also going to focus on the chord tones of the a dominant 7th chord or just a a7 chord same thing for the d chord d minor pentatonic heavily focus on the d dominant seven chord tones same thing for the e chord and then the fourth approach we're gonna take the same thing we did in approach three but we're going to kind of do it all in one single area instead of jumping from here to here to here it's all going to be done in just one small area of the fretboard so the first approach is to take one scale and to use that over all three chords so we're going to use the a minor pentatonic scale since this is blues in a so a minor pentatonic scale and that is going to be used over all three chords so just one scale the entire time so a minor pentatonic scale right here in position one looks like this it falls between the fifth and eighth fret [Music] set your a minor pentatonic scale in just one position now you could use the entire fretboard by using the five pentatonic positions if you don't know the five pentatonic positions i'll post a link to that lesson below so you could do that but for the purpose of this lesson we're just gonna keep things simple and i'm just gonna use that one position right there but i'm also gonna use the lower and upper extension so the lower extension looks like this it's just those two notes and the upper extension looks like this those three notes so instead of just confining yourself to the fifth and the eighth fret you can also play like this [Music] alright so you're not just confined to a four fret area you now have more of a soloing range to work with but it's still just the a minor pentatonic scale it's just it's taking a little bit of a neighboring pentatonic position in this direction and a little bit of a neighboring pentatonic position in this direction just to give you more to work with so that's um that's going to be the soloing framework for this approach for approach number one but we're also going to be using the blue note too so anytime you have the pentatonic scale you can always add in the blue note so the blue note is going to fall right here on the sixth fret of the a string and it's going to fall right here on the eighth fret of the g string so you can just use that whenever [Music] you can always use that note anytime you hear pentatonic you can always throw that blue note in the two kind of go hand in hand with one another so that's approach number one check out this demo then we'll move on [Applause] um all right so the second approach is going to be where you take one pentatonic per chord so over the a chord you're going to take the a minor pentatonic scale over the d chord you're going to play the d minor pentatonic scale for the e chord you're going to play the e minor pentatonic scale and when i say the minor pentatonic scale of course i mean you can throw in the upper and lower extension for each one and you can add the blue note to each one so for the a chord this is going to be your soloing framework you have all that stuff for the a chord when it switches to the d chord you move up here between the 10th and the 13th fret and you do the same stuff [Music] so that's for the d chord same thing for the e chord you then move up and you're soloing box or your position number one is between 12th and 15th fret [Music] all right so you have your a chord stuff your d chord stuff and your e chord stuff that's approach number two check out the demo then we'll move on [Applause] [Music] all right so approach number three is really where the magic happens this is where you combine the major tonality and the minor tonality together to create this hybrid sound so usually when people are looking to learn how to solo over a blues progression more intermediate players usually usually this is what they're looking for so i'm not anywhere nearly as good as the greats like stevie ray vaughan or jimi hendrix or bb king or eric clapton or any of the great blues players but they all do this every everyone does this stuff this is like just like the common thing that you're gonna find amongst all blue players that's solo over one four 12-bar blues progressions so after watching this lesson go back and listen to some of your favorite players and you're gonna recognize oh okay i hear that i hear the major minor sound you're gonna know exactly what they're doing after i explain it to you here if you don't already know it so the objective here is to treat every chord as if it's a dominant seventh chord so even if you're stalling over all major chords even if it's an a major d major e major you still treat it as if it's an a dominant seventh chord d dominant seventh chord and an e down at seventh chord or if you're soloing over minor chords a minor d minor e minor you still treat each one as if it's a dominant seventh chord in your soloing so your soloing framework is still going to be the same for each chord you're still going to have the a minor pentatonic scale with the lower and upper extensions and the blue note and all that stuff for the a chord for the d chord you're going to have the d minor pentatonic scale with the extensions and the blue note same thing for the e chord just like we talked about in approach two but we're going to focus on the chord tones of the dominant seventh chord for each chord so for the a chord you're gonna have your dominant seventh chord in this shape here you can also put your pinky down here on the eighth fret of the b string so you can play this so dominant seventh chord down in seventh chord same thing for the d same thing for the e so you have those dominant seventh chord shapes so look at the intervals for the dominant seventh chord and it's a root third fifth and a flat seventh so those are the intervals that we're going to be focusing on in conjunction with this minor pentatonic framework all right so the way to get the hybrid sound takes place with the third and the seventh of a dominant seventh chord so when you get to your third you're going to be playing both the major third and the minor third when you get to the seventh you're going to be playing both the flat seventh and the note that falls one half step lower than it which is known as the major sixth so it sounds a lot more complicated when i just say it like that but if you look at it on you know on the fretboard it's really not that hard so let me show you what i'm talking about so here's your dominant seventh chord all right so that's your minor third right there on the g string your major third is always going to be one half step higher than the minor third [Music] all right so there's your major third so anytime you find a minor third you just throw in the note one half step higher and play both of them it doesn't matter minor third major third and that's how you kind of get that hybridized sound so you also have a minor third up here [Music] there's a minor third you know if you have a minor third you slide up one half step you have your major third so that's the one trick for getting this hybrid sound the other trick is focusing on the flat seven interval so the flat seven interval is always going to be found one whole step lower than your root so if you know where your roots are so save a root here your first note of the scale you also have a root here [Music] so if you know where your root is one whole step lower than that is the flat seven all right so that's your flat seven one half step lower than that is going to be the major sixth so you can slide you can bend you can just hammer all right just using those two notes in conjunction is going to give you that hybrid sound so you know you can also find that same interval [Music] there's your flat 7 there here's your root here's your flat seven one half step lower than that is going to be that major sixth so again six to seven major six to flat seven so that's your other interval of interest for the hybrid sound so the root isn't really resulting in the hybrid sound but it's still an important note to focus on you wanna know where your roots are you to know where the a is as you're sewing over the a chord and then the fifth so the fifth is also that's not going to result in the hybrid sound but it's also a very important note to focus on for the bluesy sound so every time you have your blue note everywhere your blue note is your fifth is one half step higher so there's your fifth so that blue note thing [Music] that's gonna be important too for each chord so you're gonna focus on all that stuff over each chord so i just did that for the a chord but then you can do the exact same stuff for the uh d chord and the e chord so watch demo number three and then we'll move on to part four [Music] [Music] all right so approach number four is going to be exactly the same as approach number three except we're just going to be combining everything to just one area because when you're jumping when you're you know if you're on the a chord and you're here and then you jump up here to the d chord and then you jump up here to the e chord you know sometimes it might be not efficient to come all the way back down here or it may not be efficient to jump from here to here to here you may just want to stick in this area so the way that we're going to do this is you want to number one you want to know how to locate your dominant seventh chord shapes all in one area either here or up here and you also want to uh know other positions of the pentatonic scale to use so right now we're only looking at pentatonic position number one with the lower and upper extensions but if you know your pentatonic position number four shape that's very helpful so pentatonic position number four shape let me give it to you for a first so if your root is here all right on the low e string pentatonic position four the root is going to be on the a string so find your note a up here 12th fret so that's where your location of pentatonic position number four is going to be for the a minor pentatonic scale so here's this [Music] that's your pentatonic position number four for the a minor pentatonic scale if you wanted to play that for the d minor pentatonic scale you would just simply move your root note to wherever the note d is so here's your note d here alright so here's your note d so play that same exact shape that's your root d [Music] so knowing where your pentatonic position number four is at is going to help you to confine all this stuff to one area so you know when you're on the a minor pentatonic scale you move to the d minor pentatonic scale move to the e minor pentatonic scale instead of jumping all the way back down here to the a minor pentatonic scale you could always just stay here on the 12th fret so [Music] and then back to the a minor pentatonic scale all right so it's slightly different pentatonic position number four is slightly different than pentatonic position number one but you just need to be aware of which one you're doing all right so you can also do the same thing a minor pentatonic scale position one and then d minor pentatonic scale position four [Music] e minor pentatonic scale position four [Music] all right so knowing this pentatonic position number one and pentatonic position number four will allow you to combine this stuff into just one area so that's the first thing the second thing you want to know is you want to know how to find your dominant chord shapes uh for each of the three chords for where we happen to be so for sticking to this area right here then you already know your uh your your dominant seventh chord for the a chord so a dominant seventh chord is right here you can also put pinky down right here that's eight dominant seventh chord you have your root your fifth flat seven third major third your fifth your root and then when you put your pinky down that's the flat seventh also set your a dominant seventh chord shape if you wanna play a d dominant seventh chord shape it's like this all right so that's your d dominant seventh chord shape you have your root fifth flat seven major third and then you have your fifth all right so that's your dominant seventh chord shape there and you can either slide it up to here to play your e dominant seventh chord shape again all the intervals are going to be in the same place as for the d chord so root fifth flat seven major third fifth or you can play the dominant seventh chord shape for the e chord like this alright so that's another way to play it so that's just root major third flat seven so you know where your third is your major third your minor third and major third are always right next to each other your flat seven and sixth are always right next to each other so [Music] so you can play that shape too so knowing all that stuff plus your shells [Music] you could do that so pentatonic position number one plus pentatonic position number four really helps you to combine all this stuff together and again you can play any pentatonic position for any of these chords you can for the a chord you can play the a minor pentatonic scale all up and down the entire neck for the d chord you can play the d minor pentatonic scale all up and down the neck for the e chord you can play the e minor pentatonic scale all up and down the neck the idea is to just get it so you're playing everything in just one area focusing on these intervals all right roots thirds fifths flat sevenths major third minor third go together flat seven major sixth go together for that hybrid sound [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] all right so that's going to do it that's going to be the four different approaches to solving over a 12 bar blues progression all four approaches are perfectly valid all four approaches work you know pick and choose which ones you want practice them have fun i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Brian Kelly

Views: 388,529

Keywords: guitar, guitar lessons, blues, soloing, 12-bar blues, major, minor, hybrid approach

Id: lMas7HXnnG4

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020