{"id":6923,"date":"2016-08-10T22:19:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-11T05:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6923"},"modified":"2021-03-18T15:24:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T22:24:58","slug":"pick-a-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/pick-a-spot\/","title":{"rendered":"Pick A Spot…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let’s say you want to improve your blues soloing and you’re a little tired of just playing the pentatonic\/blues scale over the entire 12 bar blues the whole time…<\/p>\n

You want to “open things up a little” but it seems daunting to go from what I call level 1 soloing (playing minor pentatonic\/blues the whole time) to what I commonly call level 2 soloing where you start to invite in some other sounds that cater to the 3 blues chords – the I, IV, and the V.<\/p>\n

Now in case you’re not totally down with the I, IV, and V, a 12 bar blues in its simplest form goes something like this:<\/p>\n

\"12BarWithRomanNumerals_0001\"<\/p>\n

The I chord is the key you’re in… so if it’s “Blues in A” then the key is A. The IV chord is always built off the 4th tone of the scale, or it’s just 1 string up from the I (D, in the case of blues in A.)<\/p>\n

The V is 2 frets up from the IV – E in the key of A.<\/p>\n

Notice that if you want to start to draw attention to the chord changes, there are a couple of good places to do it:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Going from bars 4 to 5 where it goes from the I to the IV chord.<\/li>\n
  2. Going from bars 6 to 7 where the progression goes from the IV back to the I.<\/li>\n
  3. Going from the I to V chord in bars 8 to 9<\/li>\n
  4. Going from the IV to I in bars 10 and 11.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And, truth be told, there are probably some other good places but, let’s face it, if you just hit the ones I mentioned you’d be in great shape!<\/p>\n

    So which one are you gonna hit first?<\/p>\n

    It doesn’t matter… what matters is that you pick one and only one<\/strong><\/em>!<\/p>\n

    Make sure you have a lick that will do what you want, first. In other words, if you’re going to accentuate the move from the I to the IV in bars 4 and 5, you’ll need to either find or construct a lick that will perform that task the way you want it done.<\/p>\n

    (I have one of those here<\/a>, or you might want to check out something my Blues Soloing Construction Kit in the Course Catalog<\/a> for more licks…)<\/em><\/p>\n

    When you have that lick, it’s time to turn on a jam track and work that section to death. Over the rest of the chord changes, stick to what you know<\/em> (level 1 playing.)<\/p>\n

    But as that one change comes up in bars 4 and 5, try to put in your new lick.<\/p>\n

    It won’t work too good the first time (or maybe the first 10 times… who knows?) But soon, you’ll start hitting it. It might take a day and it might take a week.<\/p>\n

    But keep at it and you’ll start nailing it.<\/p>\n

    Once you’ve done it with 1 lick, adding another lick or 2 or 3 won’t seem nearly so daunting and before you know it you’re nailing that one particular change every time.<\/p>\n

    Remember, slow and steady wins the race. It’s better to learn 1 lick in 10 days then to try and learn 10 licks in 10 days because on day 11 you won’t remember but 1 of the 10 licks anyway!<\/p>\n

    So grab a jam track and grab some of your favorite licks and get to playing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Let’s say you want to improve your blues soloing and you’re a little tired of just playing the pentatonic\/blues scale over the entire 12 bar blues the whole time… You want to “open things up a little” but it seems daunting to go from what I call level 1 soloing (playing minor pentatonic\/blues the whole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8126,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions\/8126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}