The Three Levels of Blues Soloing (And Why Pros Follow the Changes)

If you wish your solos sounded better when you go to take a blues guitar solo, today's lesson is for you. We're going through three levels, and I'm going to meet you where you're at. By the third level, I'm hoping you have a real aha moment.

Level one: the pentatonic box

If we're in the key of E, you're probably living in the minor pentatonic box. And that's fine and good. Stevie Ray Vaughan made that sound amazing. It works over all the chords.

But a lot of folks feel trapped there. There's good information in that box, and you can still end up playing noodley patterns inside it. If that's you, you're at level one, and the next two levels are the way out.

Level two: the house of blues

Level two is breaking out of the box upward into what I call the house of blues. Put your ring finger on the root up the neck, walk the pattern down, and slide back into the pentatonic box you already know. Suddenly the box is connected to the rest of the neck instead of being a cage.

Maybe you know both of these places already. For my first couple years of playing, this was everything I knew, and I still felt stuck. I always sensed there was something more to the blues. I just didn't understand how to get at it.

Level three: follow the chord changes

This is where I see my students break through.

Over a blues shuffle, you can follow the chord changes. This is taking an approach like a jazz or bluegrass or country player, someone like Brent Mason or Josh Smith. There are only three chords, but you move with every single one.

When the E is going by, you're playing over that E chord. When the A comes, you go to the A. When the B comes, you go to the B. Every chord change, you're moving with it.

In practice, that means playing both major and minor pentatonics over every single chord. And the cleanest way to feel it is the move I teach everywhere: go up the major pentatonic, come down the minor pentatonic, and land on the chord. It sounds so bluesy, and everything leads together so well, because your lines are describing the actual song instead of one static scale.

Chew on this

Most people are thinking minor pentatonic, minor pentatonic, minor pentatonic. That made a lot of players famous. But if the idea that you can mix major and minor is new to you, take a second and chew on it, because it's the door to the whole pro sound.

The step by step version of that mix lives in up major, down minor, land major, and the complete framework is in the full four step system.

Watch the original video: Everyone Thinks They Know The Blues Until They Learn THIS

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 want an actual system instead of random videos, one where you can ask questions back and forth, check out The Blues Guitar System, my full course.