3 Chord Guitar Songs: Blues Soloing

Continuing our look at the blues, we get to the blues solo. If you haven’t already, I suggest you read the previous articles in this series (starting with an introduction to the blues and the 12 bar blues).

Now, if you’ve read the previous articles, you should have a fair idea of what’s going on with the chords in a 12 bar blues, but what about the lead parts? Well, what many don’t realise when it comes to guitar solos is: you’re only building off the harmony that’s already there.

The House of Rock

Imagine a rock band is like a building. The foundations, going deep underground, are like the drums- providing the main support for everything else (without a drummer, you can’t “rock”!) . Next, we have the ground floor, this is like the bass- providing a link between the main foundations and the rest of the building, which is like the chords and harmony. In music, the chords are like the walls of the building- they hold everything together (in “key”), and create the part that everyone can see- but they are nothing without a solid foundation (or solid rhythm section)!

So where is the melody, or solo in all this? A melody is like a decoration to the outside of the house (Christmas lights or Halloween pumpkins…). What I mean by that is: although the decorations are probably the very first thing people notice, they just can’t exist without the rest of the house.

Thinking in these terms, you’re still only using the basic chord progression- NOT widdling around aimlessly!

The Blues Scale

As I explained, the scale we use is built off the harmony that’s already there. So we’re in the key of A minor, we have three chords: Am (A, C and E), Dm (D, F and A) and Em (E, G and B). You could just look at these chords and “invent” a scale that would fit using only those notes (in order): A B C D E F G. This happens to be the “A natural minor scale”, which is great, but all we’ve really done is paint the walls of the house- not added anything.

This is also like painting your house every single colour- there’s a huge potential for clashes! To make things even easier, we cut out some of the notes to get: A C D E G (the A minor pentatonic scale), and this forms the basis of our blues scale. This is like choosing a colour scheme for our house- it works great, but it can be boring. After jamming around with this one, you’ll find that you’ll probably need some more interesting notes (just to “spice things up” a bit).

What do we add? The first note to add for a real “blues” sound is: the flat 5th (Eb). This gives you: A C D Eb E G to play around with- the traditional “blues scale“. This note, although not in any of the chords, works because it adds interest (or “decoration”) to the rest of the harmony. Just like Christmas lights, if you use it too much it just clashes, but if you use a bit every now and then it’ll really liven up your solo…er…I mean, house!

Decoration

The blues is a great style for this kind of “decoration” in the solo. Another good note you should try is: the major 6th (F# in this example), or the major third (to use the same scale over a major progression). The third is a good one, play the minor third over a major chord and bend up to the major third- listen to how bluesy that is!

Hope this gives you some soloing ideas!
Rob.

January 27, 2011 at 2:00 pm | Guitar Chords, How to, The Blues | 1 comment

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