Guitar Noise » Arjen Schippers

Blues Solo Improvisation – A Basic Introduction

Arjen Schippers — Tue, 04 Jan 2005 08:00:42 +0000

Imagine this: the bassist and drummer are laying a bluesy foundation down, the rhythm guitarist is playing that 12-bar blues, and everyone expects you to somehow play a grand solo over it. You look at your band members with despair! What to do?

Many people start playing guitar with visions of hour-long jams where the music just keeps on flowing. Unfortunately for quite a few of these players, they end up thinking that soloing or improvising isn’t for them. They believe that it’s some kind of magic only a few gifted people possess. Over the course of a few articles, I hope to take away this unwanted feeling by giving a step-by-step guide on how to improvise. In this first article we’ll start with the very basics, that is, the 12-bar blues and the pentatonic scale.

12-bar blues

For the rest of this article, we’ll be using the concept of the 12-bar blues and playing it in the key of A major. In case you didn’t know, the 12-bar blues is a chord progression of you guessed it, 12 bars or measures. It consists of three chords:

So when we play in the key of A major, we would use these chords:

While, at least for the rest of this article, you don’t really need to be able to play such a progression, it is quite important to have a feel for how it sounds. You can read more about the 12-bar blues in David’s article Before You Accuse Me.

Pentatonic Minor scale.

One of the most-used scales in blues and rock music is the pentatonic scale, and we’ll be using this very scale for most of this small series of articles. The pentatonic minor scale is basically a simplified version of the natural minor scale. Take a look at the following table, showing the natural minor and pentatonic minor scales in the key of A:

So in other words, the A minor pentatonic scale consists of the following notes: A, C, D, E, G. The easiest way to learning where all these notes are is by dividing the neck into small areas, called ‘boxes’. To keep it simple, we’ll just introduce the first box this article, and introduce others in future articles. This first box starts at the 5 th fret of the 6 th string, and goes all the way up to the 8 th fret of the 1 st string, as shown below.

Before we’ll do anything else, we must make sure we know this box inside out, and the rest of this article contains a bunch of exercises to practice this scale.

The first one is the most boring one, but there really is no way around it. Grab yourself a metronome, set it to a slow tempo, and play the following tab repeatedly. Fret each note at the 5 th fret with your index finger, each note at the 6 th fret with your middle finger, each note at the 7 th fret with your ring-finger and each note at the 8 th fret with your pinky. Make sure each note rings clearly. When you are comfortable playing the scale, increase the tempo of the metronome slightly and start again.

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

When you notice you fingers can keep on playing the scale without you having to look at the tab it is time for the next exercise. This one involves string skipping, which simply means not always playing the string adjacent to the one you’re on. Initially, this can be tricky:

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

Once again, start at a slow tempo and gradually increase it. When you can play this tab comfortably, move on to the next one.

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

Okay, so now you probably now where the notes of the scale are in this box, but do you also know the names of each note you play? If not, then this needs lot be learned. Look back to the table above, and notice that there are three red ‘A’ notes. Since this is in the key of A, we call this A note the “root” note. Before anything else, it is absolutely vital you always know where the root notes are. In our example in the key of A major, you will find them at the following locations on your fretboard:

5 th fret of the 6 th string.
7 th fret of the 4 th string
5 th fret of the 1 st string.

Now go back and play the first tab again, but every time you reach a root note you:

A) Stop playing.
B) Listen closely to the sound of the note
C) Say “root – A” to yourself.
D) Continue with the tab.

Do this a few times and then try both of the other exercises using the same procedure. When you are comfortable with this and can find the three root notes accurately and fast, it is time to learn the other notes. Make sure you not only say the name of the note, but also the number that belongs to it. Practice this in the same way as you practiced the root note, and in the following order:

5 th E
3 rd C
7 th G
4 th D

Congratulations! You now know all the notes of the pentatonic minor scale in A, and because you learned the numbers that belonged to it, you will later find it just as easy to find notes when playing in other keys.

The minor blues scale

“What, another scale?” you might be thinking now. Don’t worry! The blues scale is pretty much a pentatonic minor scale with just one tiny note added. This is the flatted fifth (designated “bV”) and is called the “blue note.” As you will later find out, this note can really add that bluesy touch to what you are playing. See the table below to see where this blue note can be found in the first box of the A-minor pentatonic scale.

Now just play the three exercises again, playing the blue notes before you would otherwise play an E note. Don’t forget to use the same procedure to remember its name, saying “blue note – Eb” to yourself when you play one.

Final exercise

The last thing we’ll do in this article might seem very unfair, but it really isn’t just here to frustrate you (no, really…). We’ll end this article by giving three MIDI backing tracks, and the goal is to simply play over it using the A-minor blues scale. You can play any of the tabs given above, or just play something else, it really doesn’t matter. The goal is to get a better feeling of how a blues-bar sounds. Just relax, play and listen to yourself. Try to hear what does and what doesn’t sound very good, and don’t worry if it doesn’t sound superb yet. We’ve barely started the journey into the land of improvisation, so just sit back and enjoy!

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

And for those who are curious, our next article will deal with various techniques like bending and hammer-ons, and will bring some sort of structure to how you can improvise. Plus, we’ll introduce a new box.

Love Is All Around – R.E.M.

Arjen Schippers — Fri, 28 Nov 2003 08:00:09 +0000

This lesson is based more on REM’s acoustic cover of The Troggs’ classic Love Is All Around. The original and the cover are the same in many ways; you should be fine if you only heard the original version. Anyway, by the time you crawled all the way to the end of this lesson, you will have learned how to spice up a simple chord progression using single notes, you’ll have played around with a strumming pattern, and you will mix it all together with a small riff or two. It is much easier then it sounds. So let’s jump straight into the song:

“These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of the song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.”

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

The verse of this song contains only four chords, and luckily none of them should be very hard. The chords used are:

The basics of the verse are quite easy, after each measure you change to the next chord. When you are at the end, you start all over again with the D-major chord. So let’s start by just strumming each chord once, using a downstroke, and let it ring until the next chord starts.

Well this is easy. It will probably sound nice when standing at the very back of the stage with a good guitar player in front of you, but it isn’t likely to win you any awards. So we need to take a step forwards, right? Right. So let’s start by, (don’t be scared), strumming each chord twice. Still only use downstrokes.

Hmpf. It sounded a bit better, at least people will know you are there, although you are still at the back of the stage, behind that great guitar player. But since we want to play this song on our own (and I assume we do) we need to offer the thousands of fans something a bit more… interesting. We could do this by playing single notes, instead of a second strum of each chord. This should get us some variation. To make it easier for us, we simply play the high-e string, while keeping our fingers on the fretboard. Now let’s see how that sounds.

Well, it is a bit more varied now. Unfortunately the single notes don’t really stand out, since the contrast with the chords is minimal at best. Maybe we could try it without full chords altogether! So instead of each full chord, we’ll only play the lowest string of the chord. That should sound like this:

Now that was an improvement, wasn’t it? Each note sounds different, and you can still hear the chord progression. But something is still not really how it should be. It sounds a bit empty and ‘lacking’. So why not spice it up with, you guessed it, more notes. To keep it interesting, we’ll just do it like this: After you played the lowest string of a chord, play the string above it. And when you have played the highest string, play one below it. That should sound like this.

Aha! Now that sounds more like it. With just a bit of practice this should be relatively easy, and it sound really nice. Of course, there are always thing you can do now to improve it, but your own creativity should guide you there. Just to give one final advice on the verse part, don’t be afraid to play around a bit. Add in a full chord at the first beat to add some variation (Verse F), or play the single notes completely differently for a change (Verse G). Try something, play around, and who knows what you can come up with.

Now we are ready to tackle the chorus. The chorus uses pretty much the same chords, but in a slightly different way, while also slowing down a bit:

G-Em-G-D
G-Em-G-A

So how should we play this? Well, again we could start with the most basic pattern, strumming each chord four times using only downstrokes:

Ouch. As if someone is shooting with a canon at you. The chords are correct, but it sounds absolutely horrible nevertheless. What we could do here is add an interesting strumming pattern. How about something like:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D D U U D

Didn’t this sound nice? Even though it won’t really put you above Hendrix, it is nice and easy, and it fits quite well with the song. Of course, you might want to offer the screaming masses some more variation, by whipping out the mighty Single Notes once more. Let’s follow the same steps as we did with Verse G. So we start by putting down the full chords on each first beat, and then we just throw some single notes down.

Great, now we have two easy ways of playing the chorus, and as an added bonus they even sound good as well. So now we know both the chorus and the verse, so all we have to do is link them together. To this we’ll blatantly steal the two ‘original riffs’. Maybe not completely correct, but close enough to sound really good. The first riff, which we will call ‘Riff A’, is really, really easy. I don’t think you can find an easier riff anywhere else:

Easy, right? Ok, let’s move on to the second riff, which we’ll call, big surprise here, ‘Riff B’. It is a little harder, but still quite easy:

The outro is just as easy, and barely worth being mentioned. You just play the verse of your choice, and end with a full A chord. That’s it. When we sum up the song, it looks like this:

1) Play ‘Riff A’.
2) Play the verse (whichever version you want) multiple times.
3) Play ‘Riff B’.
4) Play the chorus (once again whichever version you like best) once.
5) Play ‘Riff A’.
6) Back to step #2

When you did this all a few times, play the verse again a few times and end on a full A-chord. Couldn’t be easier. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.