blues isn't hard. you just don't know this system

[00:00:00]If you've been playing the guitar for years and you still struggle when it comes time to take a blues solo, today's lesson is for you. If this is the first time we're meeting, my name is Alec Klyman. I've played on Grammy-nominated recordings and I've taught thousands of people just like you how to actually play the blues. By the end of today's lesson, you are going to be able to convincingly play a blues solo whether you are in your home studio or out at a blues jam.

[00:00:24]The first thing I want you to get out of your head is playing this pentatonic scale.

[00:00:29]>> [music] >> While that pentatonic scale does sound great, it keeps a lot of people stuck and it really holds you back from channeling your inner confidence. Today, you're going to go through three levels on how to actually solo over a minor blues. Today, we're going to be using B.B. King's Thrill Is Gone as a template, okay? Thrill Is Gone is just four chords, right? It's B minor, E [music] minor, G, and F sharp. Okay?

[00:00:58]>> [music] >> Those are the three chords. So, step one is to know all those chords, right? So, for the minor chord, there's only three real shapes you got to know, which is this chord, B [music] minor, right here, and right here.

[00:01:11]Work on [music] getting it fluid up and down the neck, right?

[00:01:16]Okay? [music] And then for E minor, you want to do the exact same thing.

[00:01:23]>> [music] >> Okay?

[00:01:27]And then when it goes to the G chord, you want to know all three shapes, >> [music] >> and F sharp.

[00:01:36]Okay?

[00:01:39]Because so many people are lost noodling up and down in this pentatonic scale, >> [music] >> it really is a big problem because all those notes have equal value in those pentatonic scale. You're not sure which is higher value, which is lower value. You're just playing up and down.

[00:01:58]Well, the chord tells you what is a high value note and what is a low value note, right? Any Any note in that [music] chord is a high value note, okay? But, we're going to get to all of that in a bit. [music] So, you would want to For level one is just to play along to a thrill is gone you [music] know, backing track. Back to E minor.

[00:02:22]B G F [music] sharp B And it would sound like this.

[00:02:34]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Now, step two is something I call flirting with the third. This is a way to locate the high value notes in your chords. So, for B it would look [music] and sound like this.

[00:03:18]Or for this shape >> [music] >> for this shape Okay?

[00:03:26]Same thing for E minor.

[00:03:30]Or here.

[00:03:31]>> [music] >> Or right?

[00:03:37]And then for the dominant or the major chords >> [music] >> it would sound like this.

[00:03:47]>> [music] >> Those are all the different shapes. and then for >> [music] >> for F sharp, it would be >> [music] [music] >> Okay.

[00:04:05]And putting it all together, it would look and sound like this.

[00:04:08]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Now, the last step, the third and final stage for playing blues. Now, we finally add this pentatonic, right? And there's two real sliding pentatonic superhighways that you want to understand. One is down here.

[00:04:46]>> [music] >> That's one of them. Here's another one.

[00:04:54]>> [music] >> Okay.

[00:04:59]>> [music] >> Now, before you start noodling and getting lost and just going up and down that pentatonic scale, here is a solution for that. It's called the CSC method, chord scale chord. What you want to do is play the chord, do a fill with this scale, >> [music] >> and then play a chord again.

[00:05:24]So, it would look and sound like this.

[00:05:29]>> [music] >> Right?

[00:05:30]Same thing.

[00:05:35]You go to the next chord.

[00:05:40]>> [music] >> Go to the next chord.

[00:05:46]Right? And then when the G comes along you do your little flirt with the third, F sharp.

[00:05:54]Right? So that would all look and sound like this.

[00:05:59]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Now there's one thing missing, a huge huge gap that needs to be filled, okay?

[00:06:36]This sliding pentatonic >> [music] >> it's missing a critical note. It's missing the high value note from the E minor.

[00:06:47]>> [music] >> Right? It's missing this note. You can see it visually. It's missing the G.

[00:06:51]Okay?

[00:06:51]>> [music] >> So when you are playing the chord progression, when you play the B minor you play you can play that B sliding pentatonic. But when you go to the E minor, you add that one note. So it's a pentatonic plus one note, right? You add this G. You can [music] hear it. So if you're playing the chord progression >> [music] >> B >> [music] [music] >> you can hear that chord.

[00:07:26]Right? I'm just playing out in the air, no backing track, and you can hear the chord changes happening because you add [music] this one note. You add that flat six or the G note to that sliding [music] pentatonic scale, that pentatonic superhighway, okay? And you're going to want to do it up here as well. [music] And that is only when the E minor happens, okay? You can remove that flat six when the B when you're going [music] back to that B, okay?

[00:07:59]Now that you understand how to actually solo over minor blues progressions like Thrill Is Gone, you're going to want to check out this lesson so that you can dive even deeper into blues soloing.