Blues Solos For Guitar

Blues solos are a must-learn for many guitar players. As well as being integral to the playing of blues guitar, blues solos also form a cornerstone of many other styles of music derived from or influenced by the blues. Any guitarist seeking to gain a grasp of rock, pop, jazz or metal needs to learn the basics of playing a blues solo on guitar.

Copping Licks

"Copping licks" just means learning blues solos by imitation. Many famous blues guitarists first learned blues solos for guitar by copping licks - Buddy Guy has said in interviews that he started developed his own distinctive style by studying B.B. King, while Eric Clapton's early recordings show a lot of influence from Albert King.

There are varying opinions on whether it is best to learn from written music, or from recordings. In general, I think that there is something to be gained from both approaches. But be aware that blues solos often contain microtonal nuances that can be lost in transcription to sheet music, and when copping blues licks it is usually best to copy them from an audio recording. In decades past, guitarists would copy licks from vinyl records, and would slow the record down by slowing the turntable. This would also lower the pitch, meaning that the guitar player would have to learn parts by playing them in a lower key. These days, with most people listening to most music in a digital format most of the time, we usually don't have that option. There are "phrase trainer" devices that will play a CD slower without changing the pitch, and there are also software programs that do something similar to mp3 files.

Improvising

You can get a good feel for the blues simply by copping licks from players that you like, but at some stage you will probably want to go beyond this.  Blues solos for guitar are usually not written in advance but improvised.   Improvisation, of course, just means making it up as you go along.  It doesn't mean stabbing at the fretboard at random.  Rather, you want to know what scales will work over the chord progression you are soloing over.  There will be some scales that work over the whole progression, some that will work over most of it, and other things that you can use over small parts.

The blues scale

The blues scale is the basic structure used for playing blues solos. It is a six note (or hexatonic) scale made up of the notes 1 ♭3 4 ♭5 5 ♭7 8. Another way to think of the blues scale is that it contains all the notes of the minor pentatonic scale, and also the flatted fifth. The handy thing about the blues scale is that it works over the whole 12 bar blues progression, no matter where you are up to in it, and it sounds great. This scale is the basic building block for playing blues solos on guitar - there are many other scales and modes you can draw from, but the blues scale is the best place to start from.

Blues solo trading exercises for 2 guitarists

One of the best ways to play blues solos for guitar is to team up with another guitarist and trade solos.  This can be done with a guitar teacher, or just with another guitarist who also wants to work on their guitar solos.

Swapping 12 bars

This is one of the simplest exercises, and is the one that gives the most scope to explore playing a complete solo over a 12 bar progression.  To do this, choose a 12 bar progression to play, and then play through the rhythm together one or two times.  Then, one of you will plays rhythm, while the other improvises a solo over that rhythm.  When the progression ends, the lead player switches to playing rhythm, and the rhythm player switches to playing lead.  You don't want any "gaps" or pauses during the switchover - to practice it properly you want the music to continue uninterrupted, so that the 1st bar of the progression starts right at the end of the 12th bar of the last time through the progression, without any pause or change in tempo.

Bar for bar

If you really want to tighten up your chops, try playing bar for bar.  This is like swapping 12 bars, except that instead of swapping rhythm and lead at the end of every progression, you swap at the end of every bar.  You want every switch over to go smoothly, so that you go through the 12 bars as steadily as if one person was playing the rhythm the whole way through.

Call and response

In this exercise, one guitarist plays a lead over the first 4 bars of a 12 bar blues, while the other guitarist plays the rhythm.  Then, the lead guitarist switches to playing rhythm, while the rhythm guitarist attempts to play the lead exactly as the other guitarist did in ther first 4 bars.  After that, both guitarists play the last 4 bars of the progression together.  The next time through, the guitarists can either swap roles or do the same again.  The guitarist who plays the first lead has a tough job.. you want to try to play something the other guitarist can succesfully imitate, so don't try to play the most difficult thing you know.  This works best when you start off very easy and gradually make things more difficult.

3 notes

This is like Call and Response, except that the guitarist playing the first lead will choose just 3 notes to play some phrases with.  The guitarist who plays the next lead does not try to copy those leads exactly, but instead uses those same 3 notes to play different phrases. This is a great way to try different possibilites of combining the notes of a scale, and can really help you explore the same old scale in different ways whenever you might feel that you're stuck in a rut or repeating the same old licks over and over again.