I’ve gotta tell you about this new blues guitar improvisation site I found yesterday! It’s called www.UltimateBluesBackingTracks.com and has a whole bunch of AWESOME blues backing tracks you can download. It’s so cool, unlike most backing tracks rather than synthesize the instruments these guys took a blues band into a recording studio and recorded them playing then wiped off the lead guitar parts, so you end up with a real live backing track!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SITE!

What makes this site even cooler is that with every track you get tabs for 10 blues licks! Such a cool idea! Anyway me being me, I went the whole 9 yards and downloaded their complete package which has every track on the site plus all the blues licks (500 in total, it’s gonna take me a while to learn those) AND you get two free blues guitar improvisation courses to go with them. You get their PENTATONIC MASTERY GUIDE and their 10 WEEK GUITAR COURSE, which are worth their weight in gold on their own, with these being bundled in as a free bonus it’s crazy.

Anyway guys go and check this site out, you’ve gotta hear these tracks, plus it’s dirt cheap!

www.UltimateBluesBackingTracks.com

Have fun!

So, how do you do it? Experimentation is the key! Start off by learning just a few blues licks  then spend time playing around with those licks, rewrite them over and over, make new beginnings, add your own endings until you end up with a whole bunch of licks that have all morphed from those original few.

Next make a list of all your favorite blues guitar players, then study their style of blues guitar improvisation. Say you had a list of Eric Clapton, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler, you’d then learn say 5 licks from each of them, then repeat the experimentation process. Imagine melding the styles of those 4 guitarists into one, after a while you’d start to see a unique style starting to emerge. I’m a big fan of studying guitarists from different genres too, imagine putting a few reggae, country or even metal flavors into your blues playing. It might sound weird at first but that’s why you practice! It takes time to shape your style but it’s ultimately going to be worth it!

Read interviews with your guitar heroes they’ll always tell stories about how they used to copy THEIR heroes when they were starting out. Just look at Eric Clapton his late 60’s style was really similar to blues legend Albert King! Even Hendrix used to copy Buddy Guy in his early days and look at the sound he ended up creating!

So, if you want to improve your blues guitar improvisation, get learning those licks people!

Ok, so the two shapes I’ve talked about so far are the minor pentatonic scale and the blues scale, both of which are MINOR scales. To break it down to it’s most basic form MINOR scales sound kinda sad and MAJOR scales sound a little more upbeat. I know some of you more experienced guys will be rolling your eyes at that but it’s easiest way to get the idea across! If you think about it, blues is kinda meant to be sad music “I got the blues” but we all know from experience that there’s a whole load of cool upbeat blues that makes you wanna shake your tailfeather. This is where the MAJOR pentatonic scale comes into play.

So, is it really that easy to play? OH YEAH! It’s EXACTLY the same shape as the minor pentatonic, you just play it 3 frets down. Start from your root note as you always would, then count down 3 frets and play the same shape and hey presto instant MAJOR pentatonic scale! So for example if you were playing in the key of E count backwards from the 12th fret, and play your pentatonic shape at the 9th fret. Try it now, you’ll notice it has a cool BB King type vibe to it. It’s also THE scale to use for country…so you can work some nice country blues styles into your playing!

That’s all for today guys, now go have some fun!

So which note do we add? It’s dead easy, start from the first note of the scale, move across one string and up one fret and there you have it. So if you were playing in A, you’d start on the 5th fret of the low E string move across a string to the 5th fret of the A string, then jump up 1 fret to the 6th. That’s the blue note!

There are actually five shapes for the blues scale, just like with the pentatonic scale. In most of the shapes you’ll find the blue note crops up twice! In pattern 1 in A, it appears on the A string - 6th fret AND the G string - 8th fret! Just work out what the actual blue note is (A, B, C etc) then see how many times that note shows up in the pattern. So there you have it! The Blues Scale!

The best scale to learn first is the pentatonic scale. This is a simple 5 note scale that is dead easy to memorise and pretty easy to make some good sounds with. There are actually five shapes to learn in total but to start you off we’ll just learn the first one.

All you need to do is move this shape up or down depending on which key you’re in. So if you’re playing in A, start the shape on an A note (fret 5) If you’re playing in B start it on a B (fret 7) it’s as simple as that!