A mistake made by many players in their blues guitar solos is to try and cram in too many notes. A listener on the receiving end of a barrage of notes will most likely turn off and not hear what you’re trying to say.

Blues guitar soloing is a bit like speaking. If you spout out a non-stop battery of words when you talk to someone and leave them no space to reflect and integrate what you say then the chances are they will switch off and start wondering how they can extract themselves from the conversation as fast as possible. Similarly a solo crammed full of notes will overwhelm the listener and have a weaker impact.

Here’s Why You Get Into This Trap

The first step to blues guitar soloing for most players is to learn the pentatonic or blues scale and then spend hours of practice to learn how to run up it and down it as fast as possible.

Once you learn how to run up and down the scale at a reasonable speed the next step is usually to try some improvisation. And guess what you do when you start to improvise? You do what you know, run up and down the blues scale as fast as you can.

If you practice with scales a lot you’ll develop the habit of playing all the notes. So, you need to spend some of your practice time on something different. One way is to practice using fewer notes.

Change Your Practice Habits

If the above common learning route leads to bad blues guitar solos, then it is clear that you must practice differently if you want to learn to create interesting solos. One good way to do this is to use what I call the 3 note blues solo.

3 Note Blues Solos

3 note blues solos are a practice tool to get you thinking differently about the scales. There are 3 simple rules:

1. You can play only 3 notes

2. You can play those 3 notes in different scale box positions

3. You can play the notes in different ways, e.g. straight, bend or slide into them, vibrato…

Putting 3 Note Blues Soloing To Work

Make up some licks in advance, write them down if you’re more comfortable with that. When you have a few 3 note licks worked out, put on a jam track, and practice them over the chords.

When you feel ready try to make some more licks up on the fly, after all, the goal is to improvise. You can create new licks by playing an “answer” to your pre-defined licks, or play a pre-defined lick differently – change the timing, adds bends, slides or other effects.

You Are What You Practice

Remember that you are what you practice. If you practice whizzing up and down blues scale boxes as fast as you can then that’s what your solos will sound like.

To create solos with real feeling you must practice differently. The three note solo exercise helps you to get a new perspective on the scales. It will make you think about note choices and learn to create interesting sounds with each note.

Use three note solos as you practice blues improvisation to build better feel and phrasing. Remember, you don’t have to play all the notes of the scale in every solo just to show you know them.

There is a lot of information available on playing blues guitar solos, but where do you start if you’re just beginning? You could spend ages learning and memorizing scales, scale positions, boxes, patterns, bends, slides, hammers and so on. But what you want is to have some fun jammin’ the blues, right?

So to get you off to a quick and simple start, here’s a lesson that shows you a minimal set of notes you can use to start playing beginner blues guitar solos right away.

12 Bar Blues Recap

In this lesson we’ll learn how to play some easy blues guitar solo licks over a blues in E major. Before we look at the licks, let’s make sure you know the E major blues, shown below with the E7, A7 and B7 chords.

/ E7 / E7 / E7 / E7 / A7 / A7 / E7 / E7 / B7 / A7 / E7 / B7 /

To practice blues solos over this progression record yourself as you play it using any chord shape you want.

Beginner Blues Guitar Solo Position

Blues player most commonly use the minor pentatonic scale to play their blues guitar solos. If that all sounds like Greek to you that’s because it is. Penta is Greek for five – the scale has five notes, and tonic is a note. As we’ll see you don’t have to speak any more Greek to use it.

The five notes of the blues scale repeat many times on the guitar fretboard, which can confuse you. To keep things simple in this lesson we’re going to look at just one occurrence of each note, right up near the end of the neck close to the open chord positions you’re probably familiar with.

The fretboard diagram below shows the notes of the E pentatonic scale: the root note E (marked R), the b3 (pronounced flat third), the 4, 5 and finally the b7 (flatted seventh).

1    |---|---|---|---|
2    |---|---|---|---|
3 b3 |---|-4-|---|-5-|
4 b7 |---|-R-|---|---|
5    |---|---|---|---|
6    |---|---|---|---|

Use your index finger to play the R and 4 notes and your ring finger to play the 5. The b3 and b7 are played on the open 3rd and 4th strings.

Example Blues Licks

Now you have some basic blues note positions, but how do you make a solo with them? The answer is, make up licks with the notes and play them one after another.

A lick is a short sequence of notes. You can think of the five pentatonic notes as the letters of your musical alphabet, and licks are like the words or phrases you create by combining these letters. This might sound complicated, but it’s actually really easy because unlike a language like English there are virtually no spelling mistakes in the blues.

The easiest way to get the hang of this is to take a look at some example licks.

We’re going to use guitar tab notation, this presents the six strings of the guitar, lowest string at the bottom, and marks the fret number to play on each string. Read the tab from left to right and play the indicated notes one after another. The beats are marked above the tab lines.

Blues Solo Lick 1

   1  &  2  &  3  &  4  &
1 --------------------------
2 --------------------------
3 -------------------0------
4 ----0--0-h2--0-h2-----2---
5 --------------------------
6 --------------------------

Blues Solo Lick 2

   1  &  2  &  3  &  4  &
1 --------------------------
2 --------------------------
3 -------2--4--2--0---------
4 -2-----------------2~~~~~-
5 --------------------------
6 --------------------------

Blues Solo Lick 3

     1  &  2  &  3  &  4  &
1 --------------------------
2 --------------------------
3 -2h4---2h4---2h4--4-------
4 ---------------------2~~~~
5 --------------------------
6 --------------------------

Put It Together

Practice these licks until you can play them comfortably and in time. Then you can build a solo by stringing them together over the 12 bar blues progression. Once you’ve mastered these make up new licks of your own using the five notes, try any idea you like to discover how it sounds.

That’s it, you’re on your way to becoming a blues guitar player. If you’d like to learn more about playing blues guitar, I recommend this easy to follow beginner blues guitar video lesson.

A great sounding way to play backup guitar on a blues song is by using a riff. A riff is a simple rhythmic motive that can be played in the background all through a 12 bar blues progression. In this lesson we’re going to learn a simple riff and see how it is played over the different chords of a blues progression in E major.

The first figure below presents the basic riff pattern based around an E chord and some notes from the pentatonic major chord. This is a common way to create riffs, mixing a chord with a short single note phrase.

|-0----------------|-0--------------|
|-3--0h2-----------|-3------2-0-----|
|-1------1-0h1-----|-1--0h1---------|
|-2------------2---|-2--------------|
|-2----------------|-2--------------|
|-0----------------|-0--------------|

In the 12 bar blues that follows we are going to take this basic riff and play it on all the chords. As you’ll see the riff is modified slightly when we move the the A (IV) and B (V) chords. Again, this is a very common way of using chord riffs so they support the harmony. The modified riff is based on the same E chord shape played up the neck at the 5th and 7th frets for A and B respectively. You’ll have to use a bar position to play the chords on beat one.

You’ll notice that the riff varies slightly in different bars. This helps add some interest but is not absolutely necessary, the same one bar pattern could be used throughout. In bar four the riff is modified to finish on the 2nd fret of the B string instead of the open B. This note is a C which happens to be the major third of the A chord that follows. Notice how this sound sets up the A chord and makes the transition sound better. Try playing the unmodified riff on this bar to hear the difference this small change makes. Keep this trick in mind as you create riffs of your own – use tones from the next chord, the major third, fifth and seventh all work well, to lead in to chord changes a beat or so in advance.

Notice how this trick is used again in bars preceding the changes to E, B, A, and E chords in bars six, eight, nine and ten.

The progression finishes with a little turnaround riff in bars eleven and twelve. You can either play this kind of turnaround riff or just keep going with the usual pattern right through to the end, it just depends on the kind of mood you want to create with your song.

I hope you enjoy this lesson and the riff blues you can learn to play. When you’ve mastered it have a go at making up your own riff blues. Use the tips this lesson has shown you:

1. Start with a blues chord shape on beat one
2. Fill in to the end of the bar with a single note lick of three or four notes
3. Move your riff to the IV and V chord
4. Use the third, fifth and seventh of the next chord to lead into chord changes
   That’s all there is to it. Before you know it you’ll be a master blues backup player able to create interesting riffs from dusk ’till dawn down at your local blues club.

Would you like to learn to play easy blues guitar with only one chord position, without moving all over the fretboard? Well, here’s a lesson that shows you how to play cool sounding 12 bar blues guitar with only one easy beginner chord position.

12 Bar Blues Recap

First up, you need to know the 12 bar blues pattern. If you don’t know it already then let’s take a quick look at the chords normally used to play it. We’ll take a look at an example in the key of E major, a common key for blues guitar songs. The pattern, not surprisingly, contains 12 bars like this.

/ E7 / E7 / E7 / E7 / A7 / A7 / E7 / E7 / B7 / A7 / E7 / B7 /

Now you know what the 12 bar blues looks like let’s see how this pattern can be played with only one chord position.

D7 Chord Position

To play our really easy 12 bar blues we’re going to use the simple D7 chord shape shown in the chord diagram below. This is a chord that any beginner guitar player learns early so shouldn’t be too difficult.

1  |---|-3-|---|
2  |-1-|---|---|
3  |---|-2-|---|
4  |---|---|---|
5  |---|---|---|
6  |---|---|---|

Finger the chord by placing your index finger on the second string at the first fret. Then place your second finger on the third string at the second fret. Finally put your third finger down on the first string at the second fret too.

Notice how your finger tips make a little triangle formation on the bottom three strings? For this easy blues progression you’ll need to strum or pluck only these three bottom strings.

Practice grabbing that chord position to get comfortable with it, then we can move on learn how to play a 12 bar blues with it.

12 Bar Blues In E With D7 Chord Shape

To play the 12 bar blues we’ll take the D7 chord shape and move it up and down over only three frets. We start with the E7 chord which you play by placing the D7 shape two frets higher – your first finger at the base of the triangle should be on the third fret of the second string.

We’re going to make the other two chords of the 12 bar blues – A7 and B7 – really easy to play by using a little trick called a flat fifth chord substitution. You don’t have to worry about what this is or why it works for now, just use and enjoy it.

The A7 chord substitution is played by sliding the E7 chord down just one fret. Your index finger should be on the second fret of the second string. The B7 is played by moving the E7 position up one fret, index finger on the fourth fret of the second string.

Using these chord substitutions has the neat advantage of putting all three chords on adjacent frets, and even better with exactly the same chord shape. All you have to do is move this shape down one fret or up one fret from the starting position on E7, things could hardly be any easier, could they?

Now you can enjoy playing the 12 bar blues progression in the key of E major with this easy blues guitar chord trick.