How to play better BLUES Solos: Scales, Licks and Tips!

over the past 3 or 4 years I've seen a real transformation in my Blues playing not necessarily in the mechanical sense of how I play but in my understanding of what to play and when essentially I've gone from the cliche stuck in the minor pentatonic guy to someone with a much broader Outlook until the point where now I can actually teach some of this stuff here on YouTube so in this video I want to share with you the key Concepts that really help me improve and I hope they can help you too so this is a slightly longer video than usual but if you watch to the end I promise there's so much great info coming up and for anyone that's a full access member on my patreon you can download my PDF mini course that accompanies this video together with all the tabs for the solos and scales you're about to see now the starting point for most of us in blues is the minor pentatonic and here it is in a minor and I'm assume most of us are already familiar with this but then to turn this into the blue scale we simply add one note the Blue Note a flat five in the case of a minor that's an E flat so let's go through we can find an E flat there at the sixth fret on the a string so let's add that in carry on up the scale and then again here an E flat at the eighth fret of the G string add that one on and then complete the scale as normal now these Blue Notes these e Flats really bring out that instant Blues vibe as you can hear there so that's the scale we're focusing on the first advice I want to give is find your licks by this I mean find ideas which really connect with you on a musical level and commit to them as cornerstones of your playing so what you're about to see is some Snippets of three tracks all in different keys different tempos and different feel but the source material for the guitar solos is actually identical [Music] [Music] so let me explain a little of what you just saw there everything was based on just three licks the first lick was this I won't go through these in massive detail cuz I'll put the tab up but I was bending up on the G string classic bends there and then letting these chord tones ring out together on the B and high e strings and then ending with the Big Bend up to the root note on the eighth fret of the B string there now the great thing with this that first part I can play as many times as I [Music] need before going into that last Bend and this gives me loads of flexibility then the second lick was this so this time I'm using some double stops playing two notes at once something we'll talk about more later but here I want to be able to play these two notes at the fifth and eighth Frets on the B string from our scale shape at the same time obviously we can't do that so I'm just moving this note the fifth fret here on the B string up to the ninth fret on the G string instead which allows me to play it together with that note of the eighth fret on the B string for a really bluesy sounding double stop sounds great sliding into it so then I'm back into the scale position there another double stop five and five on the G and B strings with a little push up there for extra blues and then resolving back to our root note of a there at the seventh fret on the D string once again here though that first bit I can play as many times as I like to give me a bit of rhythmic flexibility like so and then the third lick so this is really just a repeating three note pattern where I'm using this blue note here at the sixth fret on the a string then hammer on to the seventh fret and then fifth fret on the G string playing that as a triplet 1 2 [Music] 3 can go around that as many times as I like and then sticking another couple of notes on the end just as a kind of get out so just three licks for all those solos [Music] [Music] by finding some core licks like this and practicing them in various Styles we give ourselves a great Foundation to be confident when the time comes to solo at least we'll have something that will sound good and we can explore out from there knowing that we have familiar grind to return to if things go arai next up we need to get out of using just this one pentatonic position and start moving around the neck luckily this is pretty easy when you know how so now instead of starting our a minor blue scale on the root net of a here at the fifth fret let's start scale two Frets below with this G here at the third fret this is still going to be the a minor blue scale though so let's make a fourn note box with three and five G and a on the low E string and then three and five C and D on the a string so we've got this four note box 3 5 3 5 now this is what I call the primary pentatonic box and this is really our home base and we can get loads of licks from this you know that kind of thing now to complete the full blue scale we just need to add two more notes to this on the a string so we've got 1 2 3 four our four note box and then we come up one fret on the a string for an E flat our blue note that we talked about before and then up one fret again for an e to complete the scale so our four note box and then then two notes directly above and that's the full a minor blue scale but the great thing here is now we can repeat this exact same pattern across the neck so once we get to the end of it on the a string we're perfectly placed to start again on the D string so here we go from the fifth fret on the D string we start again with a G and then up to the seventh fret for the a our root note then up to the G string we get a c at the fifth and D at the seventh so there's our four note box again and then the two notes above E flat and E at the eighth and Ninth on the G string so now we have the exact same pattern the exact same notes but now an octave higher so we've got it here on the low E and A strings and then again here on the d and g strings and then we can go up again to the B and high e strings starting at the eighth fret on the B we've got our G then up to the 10th for the A and then onto the high E C at the eighth d D at the 10th so that's the four note box and then the two notes above E flat and E at the 11th and 12th Frets so now all together we've got three positions with the same pattern starting with the low in the middle and then the high position and now you can see how this starts to move us right across the neck and of course anything we do in one position we can now easily do in the other positions so this is a hugely powerful way to look at the blue scale so here's a solo using this approach and see how it gives me so much more range and fluidity across the nck [Music] now so far we've just been focusing on the minor blue scale but as we advance in our Blues playing we want to be able to use both minor and major so back to our original a minor blue scale pattern starting at the fifth fret and all we need to do to turn this into the a major Blue SC scale is simply move it down three Frets so now we're starting at the second [Music] fret and this is the a major blue scale but you'll notice we're no longer starting on an A but starting on a f sharp here and this is because F Shar minor and a major share the exact same notes they're known as relative minor and major but this means we can't just play the exact same licks but three Frets down we need to make a slight adjustment to account for where the root nerve a now Falls in the pattern so in the a minor blue scale we get our first a here the first note of the pattern of the fifth fret on the low E well we still get that same note when we play the major scale starting at the second fret but now it's the second note of our pattern but we can still use it as a resolution point so instead of playing a minor lick maybe like this landing on that a we could play a major lick like that landing on the same a and I'm just rhythmically adjusting to make sure I hit that note on the right beat there now by using the major scale we get a brighter sound we can still add in the blue note for extra Blues feel but it's not quite as dark sounding you hear that difference then we had an a here in our minor scale at the seventh fret on the D string now this a still occurs but now it's here at the second fret on the G string the same note so instead of a minor lick like this I can maybe play a major lick like so a similar kind of vibe but a bit brighter now landing on that same a but the second fret the G string and then again we get our a of the fifth fret on the high e or maybe just something simple I could land down onto that a in the minor scale but then from the major scale maybe I want to land up to it like that as a really simple lick now in the solo here I'm going to alternate between major and minor each time the chord changes so really listen out for that shift between the brighter and darker [Music] [Music] tonalities next up let's look at some double stops which simply means playing two notes at once and in my mind this is where you really start to sound like you know what you're doing so there are three main intervals we can think of when playing double stops thirds fourth and six and we want to think of all of these in terms of how they fit around the chords so starting with a standard a bar chord here let's just take the two notes on the G and B strings the sixth and fifth Frets a c Shar and an e which together make a third now to give this some movement we can slide in chromatically from one fret below like so and and then moving up the scale in thirds we would then go to seven on the G with seven on the b a d and an FP another set of thirs so we've got that so far then we can go up again to nine on the G with eight on the B an E and A G which we saw earlier so we've got these different sets of thirds like so and putting them together opens up a lot of possibilities looks like so then back to our bar chord and this time let's just take the two notes on the B and high e strings and E and an a together these make a fourth now with these it works great to slide up two Frets from the fifth to the seventh and back down again makes a really nice bright sound that kind of thing but then if we want to we can go up again to the eighth where we find some darker bluesier sounding notes and you get that kind of lick when you add those in and then let's look at some six and this time we're taking the notes from the G and high e strings from our bar chord so a c Shar and an a which together make a sixth now when we play these we just need to make sure we're muting this B string in between now from here we can move up to three pairs together at seven and seven eight and eight and nine and nine so we've got the chord tones and then three pairs above it like that which gives us licks like this kind of [Music] thing you know you instantly recognize that type of sound and it's great for turnarounds and things like that so we've got three types of double stops third fourth and six now all of these are based around the a chord here but as the chords change we can do exactly the same around whichever chord we're playing over so once we get up to D we can play our thirds like that fourth like that and six like that so here's a solo based purely on these double stops and hopefully you can hear things are starting to sound quite sophisticated now [Music] moving on and let's talk about something which is real life goals for blues and jazz musicians that's playing the changes now this concept can seem scary but I want to show you a fairly straightforward method using what I call the blues chord scale that is a scale for soloing which perfectly outlines each chord so let's take an a chord again and two things we can do to make this more bluesy firstly take off the little finger to make it a seven chord and secondly Hammer onto the G string for a minor to Major Field now with that in mind let's focus on just the top four strings here so from our chord we can use all these notes of the fifth fret on the top four strings plus this little Hammer onto the sixth fret on the G string but then we can also add all the notes of the seventh fret on those top four strings as well which all come from the a major scale so they're all going to work so we've got this with the hammer on and this so I think of it as being like two bars with a little bridge in between on the G [Music] string so that's our basic scale around the a chord we could play it like single notes like so so this scale perfectly outlines the a chord and we could play a lick something like this then when the progression moves up to the four chord of D we can use the exact same scale shape and play a similar type of lick and you'll he we're now fully outlining the chord changes you really hear that chord change happen and then up again to e back to a see we're really playing the changes now now this is hugely powerful as is but let's just take it one step further so we've got our two bars with our bridge in between and let's go up one fret again but just on the top three strings now at the eighth fret we're going to bar across and we find three Blue Notes we can add in if we want a darker flavor so we can kind of reach out to those listen for how as I get to those notes it really darkens [Music] up you hear that and we can play things like like that to give us a darker bluesier flavor so we've got our two bars with the bridge in between and then our three Blue Notes One fret above just on the top three strings now without going into details I can tell you that we've got all the notes we need here for the pentatonic the blue scale the mix lydian and the Doran so this is immensely powerful so let's hear a solo based on this Blues chord scale watch out for how I shift each time the chord changes and how I often play more than one note at once to really bring out the changes [Music] [Applause] [Music] finally I really want to encourage you to play completely solo by which I mean no band and no backing track as this really tests not just a musical knowledge and how you outline the harmony with your solos but it also really puts a spotlight on your Rhythm feel and how you can carry a performance just as an example the solo you're about to see combines this classic Baseline this time in B flat with some bluy chords and add some great legs now these individual elements might not seem that hard in their own right but it's pretty challenging to keep everything flowing together [Music] so thanks for watching I hope that was useful don't forget the PDF guide on patreon but otherwise I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Jules Guitar

Views: 30,056

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Id: 0rmGgwcvMdM

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024