Blues Guitar Soloing – Check out this site!

Blues Guitar Soloing – Check out this site!

Morning guys,

Just thought I’d drop you a quick post to tell you about my new favorite blues guitar website. I was on the hunt for some blues backing tracks last night and came across this site www.ULTIMATEBLUESBACKINGTRACKS.com. It’s crazy, their tracks sound awesome! Most of my backing tracks have that kinda fake ’synthesized’ sound to them but the guys from this site simply took a blues band into a recording studio for a few weeks and recorded them without the lead guitar. It’s truly like playing along with a real live band. Plus you can download them instantly!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SITE!

What’s made this my favorite blues guitar soloing website is that you get a bunch a free licks with every track so you get new stuff to learn with every download. I went the whole nine yards and downloaded their ultimate package which gives you about 50 backing tracks, 500 blues licks and a bunch of free bonus lesson content. I’ve got a ‘pentatonic mastery’ guide and a full 10 week guitar course as a free bonus…I’d have happily paid for these on their own merit, so the fact that they’re free is pretty crazy!

Anyway guys, check it out they’re perfect for practicing your blues guitar soloing and trust me you won’t get bored with this many tracks to play with!!!

www.ultimatebluesbackingtracks.com

Until next time

Barry

Blues Guitar Soloing – The Major Pentatonic Scale!

Blues Guitar Soloing – The Major Pentatonic Scale!

I’m all about making life easy for you guys, so this week I’ve got yet anoter blues guitar soloing tip for you that you can learn in a matter of seconds! This technique gives you a whole new palette of sounds without actually having to learn anything new. Sounds great huh? That’s because it is! Ok on with the lesson…

So the scales I’ve talked about before, the pentatonic and blues scale are both known as MINOR scales. After all the blues is meant to be kinda sad so a minor scale is the perfect choice to get that across. However we all know that not all blues is sad sounding, you can have some really cool up tempo rock n roll style blues that makes you wanna jump around like a crazy person. The perfect choice for this style of blues is the MAJOR pentatonic scale.

So how do you play it? It’s simple, it’s EXACTLY THE SAME shape as the minor. All you do is count 3 frets down the neck from the root note of whatever key you’re playing in and play your standard pentatonic shape. That’s it! So if you were playing in the key of A you’d count three frets back and start your scale on the 2nd fret (an F# note). Try it now! Find yourself a blues backing track and experiment with it. You’ll find it gives a much more uplifting sound than the minor version with a little bit of a BB King twang thrown in Now go try it!!!

Blues Guitar Soloing – The Blues Scale!

Blues Guitar Soloing – The Blues Scale!

Ok, so last time I talked about the pentatonic scale, this week we’re going to be talking about the blues scale. You’ll be pleased to know that this is so easy you can learn it in seconds (providing you learned the shape I gave you last week). All you need to do is add in 1 single note, which is actually known as ‘the blue note.’ The pentatonic scale has a real bluesy tone to it alone, but once you add this extra note you’ll find it sounds even more bluesy!

Ok, so which note do we add? It’s simple, put your finger on the first note of the scale, then move it across to the A string, then move it up one fret! That’s it, that’s the blue note! In some patterns that same note crops up a couple of times so take note of what note it is, then look through the rest of the pattern to find out if it shows up a second time.

So here’s an example:

If we’re playing in A. Put your finger on the 5th fret of the low E string (An A note), then move it up a string to the 5th fret of the A string, then move your finger up one fret to an Eb note and there it is! If you look through the rest of the patter you’ll find it shows up again on the 8th fret of the G string. So all you do is play your normal pentatonic scale shape but add the note at the 6th fret of the A string and again at the 8th fret of the G string and there you have it! Instant Blues Scale!

Blues Guitar Soloing – What scales to use!

Blues Guitar Soloing – What scales to use!

If you want to play a blues guitar solo, you have to know which notes you can play! That’s why scales exist, essentially a scale is a group of notes that work well over certain chord sequences. Imagine if you just played any note you wanted, in fact go and try it, you’ll find it sounds pretty awful. So we need to harness the notes that DO work and avoid the ones that DONT work.

The best scale to learn when you first start blues guitar soloing is the pentatonic scale. It’s a 5 note scale that’s really easy to remember and the best part is ALL the notes within the scale work. You’ll find it hard to find a note in there that sounds bad. So here it is…

So, the way it works is, you need to know which key the song you’re going to solo over is in then play this shape within the same key. It’s so easy. If you were playing a song in the key of A, then start that shape from an A note (5th fret). If the song is in D then start it from a D note (10th fret). It’s just the same shape playable from different parts of the neck!

Blues Guitar Soloing – How to create your own sound!

Blues Guitar Soloing – How to create your own sound!

When you begin playing blues solos and thinking about the dynamics of a solo, how to build and release tension etc, you first need to learn a basic set of Blues licks to begin with. In case you’re not aware, A lick is essentially a group of notes that work together and sound good over a chord sequence. You want to think of licks as you would words in a sentence, each lick works like an individual word or phrase within a larger sentence.

When playing a solo start off with a small group of licks, maybe 4 or 5 and work on combining them in as many different ways as possible. Experimentation is the key! “Borrow” blues licks from your favorite players and simply work on putting them together in as many ways as you can. That is the essence of blues guitar soloing! If you can take the individual styles of all of your favorite players then combine them into one, while adding a little of your own special sauce you’ll see your own style start to emerge.

Read any famous blues guitarists biography and you’ll hear them say how they were just copying this guitarist or that guitarist. See Eric Clapton emulating Albert King or Hendrix copying Buddy Guy, if it works for them, it’ll work for us!

So go for it, go and practice your blues guitar soloing now. Pick 5 of your favorite blues guitar players, learn at least 5 licks from each of them and practice mixing them together! I’ll warn you, it gets addictive!