Blues Guitar Soloing

The blues is a great place to start with playing solos on the guitar. The reason for this can be found in the analysis of the relationship betwen the chords found in the blues and the scale of choice...the blues scales.

Let’s use the blues in A as an example. The chords in an A blues are A7, D7 and E7. The notes found in each chord are as follows:

A7 - A C# E G
D7 - D F# A C
E7 - E G# B D

The notes of the A blues scale are:

A   C    D   D#  E   G

As you can see the scale shares three notes with the first chordA, C and G.

Three notes with the second chord D, A and C.

And two notes with the last chord E and D.

It’s these shared notes that make it hard to play wrong notes but you still have to use your ear to determine if what you are playing sounds right or wrong. For instance, stopping on the note D against an A7 chord doesn’t sound quite right.

Again, most of this falls under the music theory umbrella. If you are confused by this it’s ok.

You can learn it later by checking out some of the resources mentioned at the end of this report. You can also get a good book on music theory.

My goal for this report is to get you started on the basics by showing you the blues scale, a few basic licks and giving you a few solo ideas to start with. Let’s start by learning the blues scale. This is a classic scale and fingering that has been used by blues and rock guitar players for many years.