Learn Blues Guitar - Make Your Blues Guitar Solos More Interesting
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So, you're getting started with blues guitar and have some familiarity with using the blues scale to solo over a 12-bar pattern. That's great, but you're not sure how you can go beyond randomly playing notes to create a solo that will really blow people away? Killer guitar solos are about more than playing notes from your chosen scale aimlessly all over the fretboard! Here are a few tips for creating a great blues guitar solo:
Firstly, work out the notes of the chords that you're playing the solo over and ensure that you know where they fall in the scale you're using. This is particularly important with the root notes. These provide the strongest resolution points, so phrases that start and end with chord tones will often sound better. Start with the root notes, and for each chord in the 12-bar blues pattern you are using practice playing phrases that start or end (or both) with the root note. Once you’re comfortable with this try phrases that start and end on other tones from the current chord.
Arpeggios are the notes of a chord played separately rather than strummed all at once, so throwing arpeggios into your solo will make chord-tone heaven! Try playing arpeggios of the appropriate chords with different rhythms over a 12-bar blues chord pattern, and then try to incorporate them in with other phrases of your solo.
A very important musical concept is repetition, as familiarity is appealing to listeners and solos with good use of repeated phrases can sound more thought out than free flowing solos. There are many ways to use repetition in your solo to make it sound great:
- There's nothing wrong with just playing a lick and repeating the same lick a few times, particularly if the chord changes underneath it - this can sound really great if used well.
- Try repeating the rhythm of a lick, but changing the notes that you play.
- Or you can even use the same notes, but vary the rhythm. This can be more difficult than repeating the rhythm, but can sound very good.
- Even just playing the same note or double-stop repeatedly can sound great in the right place in a solo. A good pattern is to play triplet notes, maybe sliding or bending into the first note of each triplet. This technique was often used by players such as Chuck Berry.
- “Question and answer” phrases are very common in blues. This is where you get a question phrase, often repeated possibly with some variation, that is then followed by an answer phrase that is usually more freely improvised. Often the question and answer are played by different instruments, but can also be done effectively on one guitar by playing the questions low down followed by answers an octave or two higher. Use the blues scale to create a "question" phrase low down in the guitar's range. Play it and then follow it with an answer phrase played higher up the scale. Repeat this over a 12-bar blues pattern using the same question phrase with different answers each time. Start to vary the questions a little once you have mastered the basic technique.
Well, there's a few ideas that will hopefully make your blues solos sound more professional. Hopefully you will find them beneficial as you learn blues guitar!
