How to Solo Over a Minor Blues Like The Thrill Is Gone

If you've been playing the guitar for years and you still struggle when it comes time to take a blues solo, today's lesson is for you. By the end of it you'll be able to convincingly solo over a minor blues, whether you're in your home studio or out at a blues jam.

The first thing I want you to get out of your head is the pentatonic scale. It sounds great, but it keeps a lot of people stuck, and it holds you back from channeling real confidence. We're going through three levels instead, using BB King's The Thrill Is Gone as our template.

The form: four chords

The Thrill Is Gone is just four chords. B minor, E minor, G, and F sharp.

Level one: know every chord, everywhere

Step one is to know those chords up and down the neck. For each one there are only three real shapes to learn. Work on getting B minor fluid across all three, then do the exact same thing for E minor, G, and F sharp.

Here's why this matters so much. When you noodle up and down the pentatonic scale, every note has equal value. You're never sure which note is worth landing on. The chord is what tells you. Any note in the chord you're hearing behind you is a high value note. Everything else is passing.

So level one is simply playing the chords along with a Thrill Is Gone backing track, moving through the shapes as the form goes by.

Level two: flirting with the third

Step two is something I call flirting with the third. It's how you locate the high value notes inside each chord shape.

For every B minor shape, every E minor shape, and the G and F sharp, there's a third sitting under one of your fingers. You approach it, lean on it, and resolve to it. Put it all together over the form and you already sound like you know exactly where you are in the song. Because you do.

Level three: the sliding pentatonic, plus one note

Now we finally add the pentatonic. There are two sliding pentatonic superhighways you want under your fingers for B minor, one lower on the neck and one higher.

But before you start noodling up and down them, here's the guardrail. It's called the CSC method: chord, scale, chord. Play the chord, take a short fill through the scale, then land back on the chord. When the G and F sharp fly by, just outline the chord tones, the third and the root.

And then there's the missing piece. That sliding B minor pentatonic is missing one critical note: the G. That's the high value note of the E minor chord, and the pentatonic doesn't contain it.

So when the form moves to E minor, add that one note. Pentatonic plus one. The moment you do it, you can hear the chord change happen in your solo even with no backing track behind you. When the form comes back to B minor, let it go again.

Put it together

Know the four chords everywhere. Flirt with the third to find the high value notes. Then add the sliding pentatonic with the CSC method, plus that one extra note when the E minor comes around.

That's the system. Blues isn't hard. Most people were just never shown it.

For the full breakdown of the chord scale chord idea, read this post. And when you're ready to build full phrases, the ABC method is the next step.

Watch the original video: blues isn't hard. you just don't know this system

Want to go deeper?

Grab the free Blues Bootcamp. It walks through these concepts with tabs, downloadable PDFs, backing tracks, and a jam with me section.

And if you're ready to become the blues guitarist you hear in your head, check out The Blues Guitar System, my full course.