Stop Pentatonic Noodling — Do This Instead

If you've been attempting blues solos for a few weeks, a few years, or even a few decades, and you feel like you should be better by now — chances are you never learned the one concept that's holding you back. This video is for you.

My name is Alec Lehrman. I've played on Grammy-nominated recordings and I've taught thousands of students how to actually solo over the blues. Hint: the minor pentatonic box has made a lot of players a lot of money, but it's also kept just as many stuck.

We're going to fix that with a simple three-step method. We're in the key of A.

Step 1: Know the Chords

Before we touch a scale, you need three A chord shapes:

1. A open chord
2. A bar chord
3. A in the C shape (higher up — basically a C chord shape moved to A)

You need all three. Same goes for the D and E chords in an A blues. Three shapes each. Until you can see these chords laid out across the neck, every solo will feel like guessing.

Step 2: Connect the Chords With a Sliding (Super) Pentatonic

Here's where things start to open up. To go from one A chord position to a higher A chord position, you don't just jump — you walk up the neck using the A major sliding pentatonic (sometimes called the super pentatonic).

Same idea for D. To go from one D shape to another, slide up the D major pentatonic. Same for E. You're using the major pentatonic as a highway that connects the chord shapes.

This is the move most intermediate players never learn. They have chord shapes, and they have pentatonic shapes, but they don't have a way to travel between chord shapes that feels musical. The sliding super pentatonic is that bridge.

Step 3: Up Major, Down Minor, Land on the Chord

Now flip it. When you want to come back down the neck — from a higher chord position to a lower one — you don't run the major pentatonic in reverse. You come down the minor pentatonic.

So the full move is:

• Up the A major sliding pentatonic to ascend
• Down the A minor sliding pentatonic to descend
• Land on the A major chord

That hits at the heart of why blues is so hard to pin down. Blues isn't major or minor. It lives in the gray zone. By going up major and coming down minor, you're playing both flavors of the third in a single phrase, exactly like the pros do. Then you anchor it by landing on the chord.

When the D chord comes, do the same thing for D. When the E chord comes, do the same thing for E. The move is identical — only the chord and the scale change.

How to Practice This

Don't try to do the whole neck at once. Start with the thickest strings:

1. Just the bottom three strings. Up A major pentatonic, down A minor pentatonic, end on the A. Repeat for D. Repeat for E.
2. Then connect two positions of A using the sliding pentatonic.
3. Then add the descent with the minor sliding pentatonic.
4. Then play through a whole 12-bar A blues using just this move, following the chord changes.

There will be flubs. Keep going. This is live, baby.

The Big Idea

Three chords. Two scales (major and minor sliding pentatonics). One move (up major, down minor, land).

That's the entire toolkit for an intermediate blues player to break out of the box and start actually soloing over the changes. The pentatonic box isn't the enemy — it's just the first room you ever walked into. This is how you walk out of it and find the rest of the house.

Always land on the chord. The chord is the meat and potatoes. The chord is the soul. When you land on the chord, the listener knows you know exactly what you're doing.

Watch the original video: Stop Pentatonic Noodling. Do This Instead

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 so you can actually put this into your hands.

And if you're ready to become the blues guitarist you hear in your head, check out the Blues Guitar System — my full course. Use this link for $50 off.