I’ve been trying to teach myself how to solo over chord tones/make the changes in the blues and after watching probably 1000 hours on the subject, I’m more confused than ever and even feeling a bit hopeless. I understand you need to know the major thirds, arpeggios, and roots of each chord which I do. I’ve learned modes, hybrid scales, and just simply tried listening to hours of blues and just playing, but It’s been more than a year and I can’t figure it out. Do I need a teacher? I know this stuff but just can’t apply it to the guitar and have no clue why or how to go about it.
If we’re talking about soloing then I think the most important thing is to first decide the style / genre. Guitar soloing can really be anything from quite easy to incredibly complex (theoretically) and difficult (technically).
Personally I fall somewhere in between. I know my limitations so just try to work with them. Fortunately my limitations don’t stop me from playing the kind of stuff I prefer. I can’t shred fast or play fast complicated jazz but that’s OK because I’m not that interested. If I could play ridiculously fast, it would be nice but I’d only ever use it to show off occasionally 🙂
That’s not a one paragraph autobiography about me, it’s something kind of important. A lot of guitarists trying to learn or improve their lead guitar playing will seek out the “general” subject but get far too much information that’s not really important, or even relevant, to them. It can actually make things worse and cause too much confusion.
For example, you’ll hear the same tired old cliches, things like “jazz guitarists can’t play the blues” … This is utter nonsense, many jazz guitarists are far superior musicians than the average blues player, yet get them playing blues and they might sound like crap. This has nothing to do with lacking “feel” or “soul” or any of that other nonsense that people tend to spout on social media. It has everything to do with the fact that they just aren’t particularly interested in the style. They are more than capable but they don’t listen to the genre, they don’t study or practise it – that’s all there is to it. Anyone who tells you otherwise simply don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
This might feel like I’m going off of the subject but this in my opinion is probably one of the most important things to grasp so that you can focus only on what matters. The problem with many books and tutorials I think is they are either too generalised, too advanced or just a rehash of the same old stuff.
I can’t tell you how many books and videos I have bought over the years. I own hundreds, add to that all those borrowed from libraries. Eighty percent of them are the same old stuff – if you own one, you own them all. E.g, How to play blues solos, how to play lead guitar, blues for beginners, advanced rock guitar etc etc etc. Without being too derogatory to the authors, by the time you’ve gone through all of these books, you have come away only with a few pieces of knowledge … how to play a pentatonic scale, how to play a major scale, how to play a scale sequence, how to string bend, vibrato, slide, and here’s ten useless licks that are boring and you’ll never use.
OK, maybe I’m being a bit harsh but the point is – do any of these books give us many light bulb moments and make us a better guitarist? In most cases, probably not.
Now here’s the problem. Most of these books do actually tell us a lot of what we need to know. The hard part is getting the reader to understand it. Probably even harder is getting the reader to act on it. We’ll say to people “practise and experiment, listen and play along with records, train your ears”. The majority won’t bother. They’ll either not understand how – or don’t believe it will help – it all sounds too boring and non relevant. This is where everything falls apart. Much of what we learn is on a subconscious level and can be very difficult to explain. The only way to “get it” is to repeatedly do things over and over, one thing at a time. The ears and the mind will figure things out slowly all on their own – but you’ve got to keep doing it over and over, everyday. Above all, you’ve got to enjoy it. It’s extremely difficult to put into words.
Let’s take for example an intermediate guitarist who can play chords and rhythm reasonably well but has limited knowledge with lead guitar. We can assume from this that they’ve got enough technical ability to play some scales, string bend, vibrato and slides. Might need some practice with these techniques but they’ve already got well exercised fingers and dexterity and a fair amount of pick accuracy. They’re already halfway there. We’ll also assume that the chosen genre is blues and medium rock.
Now they could do the usual and spend weeks, months or even years learning the minor pentatonic scale and aimlessly playing around with it, learn different positions and noodle along the fretboard, eventually decide they’re not getting very far and end up stuck in the rut. The real problem here is all they’ve effectively done is learned the minor pentatonic scale and probably improved fingering / picking technique. In other words, technical improvements aside, months or possibly years just to learn five notes in different places along the fretboard. Most guitarists stuck in the rut don’t realise that this is really all they have done. I have no problem making that accusation because it’s one I recognise, I did this exact thing myself – and I see it in many others. It’s a big problem.
Here’s the thing. Many great guitar solos in rock and blues are nothing more than the minor pentatonic scale. It’s a generalisation but a fairly accurate one. At the cost of repeating myself – it’s FIVE notes! Your main job is to get good at those five notes and, for now, forget everything else. What makes these five notes sound like an actual guitar solo? Timing, articulation, note selection, rhythm, dynamics and space. All of this comes from experience, practice and ear training – which in turn comes from repeatedly and regularly applying it.
Most of us when in the intermediate stage spend far too much time looking for different answers when everything we need is already right in front of us. Learning different pentatonic positions will be of no use if you already have limited ideas. All you’ll do is learn to noodle scale notes in one place and then move the same noodling ideas somewhere else. If your pentatonic scales sound boring then it doesn’t matter what else you learn, be it major scales, natural minor, modes or whatever. All you’ll be doing is adding two extra notes to your current limitations. It might add a bit of sparkle at first but you’ll soon be back where you started, only this time with two more notes to potentially sound wrong. You may even drift too far away from the genre.
So the answer is to get started by getting good at playing five notes – make them interesting. The best way to do this is to play them all in one place with as many restrictions as possible. This will force you to listen harder and change what you are doing – in turn your ears and technique will improve far quicker.
This has turned into a very long reply and I’m out of time so I’ll have to come back. Maybe I’ll make this my next lesson, might be better. 🙂
