Developing Solos Using the Blues Scale

Hello, my name's Matt. This lesson involves trying to develop solos using the blues scale. Just to remind you, in case you've forgotten, the blues scale consists of six notes in total.

Constructing a Solo

One way of constructing a solo is to take four notes from that scale and create a riff.

• Imagine this:
  • If you had the six notes written on cards, shuffled them, and scattered them in front of you,
  • You could pick four at random to create a riff.
• While it might not be brilliant, technically, it wouldn't be wrong.

It's worth experimenting with the blues scale to pick out riffs and develop them into a solo.

Example Riff

To start the ball rolling, here's a very simple example:

• Using the first four notes of the blues scale from hole number two:
  • 2 draw
  • 3 draw
  • 4 blow
  • 4 draw

This gives us this initial riff.

Now, we can develop a solo out of it.

First Four Bars

• Over the first four bars of the 12-bar structure, we play the riff twice.
• Elongate one of the notes, making one note longer than the others.

In this case, I'm going to make the second note longer. It would sound like this:

• Demonstration:
  • 2, 3, 4 and 2, 3, 4

Changing the Chord

After the first four bars, the chord will change on the guitar or any accompanying instrument, and we will change the riff.

• For bars 5 and 6 of the 12-bar structure, we play each note pretty much the same value, once per bar.

Building Tension

For bars 7 and 8:

• Remove the last note from the riff and play the three remaining notes.
• We play this little three-note riff four times.

This builds up some tension, snowballing toward bar number nine.

The Apex of the Solo

Bar number nine is often, not always, the apex of a blues solo.

What we do here:

• Play something big, powerful, and noisy, like four and five draw, followed by four and five blow for bar ten, because it works.

Conclusion

Finally, we finish off with the initial riff again. At the very end, we play what we started with in the beginning, and that completes the 12-bar solo.

In a moment, I'll try and drag the rest of the band out of the pub, and we'll record an example of this for you.

Now that the guys are here, we're going to play 112 bars using the rules I described before. We're going to take four notes from the blues scale and turn them into a solo.

Are you ready? After a count of four:

1, 2, 3, 4.