Your first blues solo

Your playground

The progression: the 12-bar blues in A, from step 5. The scale: the A minor pentatonic, position 1. All its notes work over the three blues chords; some rub a little, and that’s exactly the sound of the blues.

The A notes, in orange, are your landing spots.

The rules of the game

1. Short phrases, three to five notes, then a rest as long as the phrase.
2. Repeat before you invent. Play a phrase, play it again, then change just one thing: a note, the rhythm, a slur.
3. Slip in your slurs: one hammer-on, pull-off or slide per phrase, like in your first solo phrase.
4. End on an A when the progression comes back to A7, in bar 11. Your ear hears it as an ending.

The backing

Start the progression and let it loop. Listen to one full chorus without playing, counting the bars. Then come in at the start of the second chorus.

A plan to get started

If you don’t know where to begin, follow this plan for one chorus:

• bars 1 to 4 (A7): a phrase, a rest, the same phrase;
• bars 5 and 6 (D7): a phrase that climbs toward the B string;
• bars 7 and 8 (A7): come back down gently;
• bars 9 to 12: your first solo phrase, ending on an A in bar 11, then let it ring.

On the second chorus, keep the plan but change the phrases.

Listen to yourself

Record yourself with your phone set down next to you. When you play it back, don’t judge the wrong notes: listen for whether your phrases breathe and whether you know where you are in the progression. That’s what matters.

You’ve got it when…

• You improvise two choruses without stopping
• Your phrases have rests between them
• You end on an A when the progression comes back to A7