Playing the blues may seem easy, but there’s so much more to it than just a simple scale. Sure, the minor pentatonic scale will get you started, and it sounds amazing over basic blues chords. But to really make your solos stand out, you need to know how to use those few notes in creative and interesting ways.
In this lesson, we’ll dive into the essential elements of blues soloing. We’ll cover everything from building phrases around the scale’s root to using call-and-response phrasing, sliding into notes, and targeting the roots of different chords. There’s a lot to unpack, but it’s all essential for creating killer blues solos.
Let’s start with the famous minor pentatonic scale. Example 1 shows the standard fingering at the fifth fret. What makes this scale so great is that it’s movable. That means wherever you move it on the fretboard, it becomes the minor pentatonic scale of that key. We’ll be focusing on A in this lesson, but you can easily transpose these ideas to any other key.
Despite showing just over two octaves, the scale only has five notes. That’s why it’s called pentatonic, which means “five notes” in Greek. The five notes are the root, b3, 4, 5, and b7. With just these few notes, we can play some basic blues licks. Example 3a-d demonstrates this perfectly, so be sure to give it a close look.
Ready to take your blues solos to the next level? Check out the full lesson here.