Blues Guitar Soloing Techniques – part 1

Blues Guitar Soloing Techniques – part 1

Hey all, thanks for joining me again.

This time I am showing you some must see blues techniques to take the expression of your soloing to another level.

These are the techniques that blues masters like Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King etc. use to make their solos have so much feeling.

So without further adieu here is part 1 of Blues Soloing Techniques with video to follow below:

1) Rakes

This technique involves dragging the pick across muted strings before picking the chosen note at the end of the strum.  It is best to choose a target note and use a combination of left and right hands to mute the strings to achieve this sound.

2) Trills

This technique involves rapidly vacillating between 2 pitches.  I am using the Gm pentatonic as an example but other scales can also be used to do this technique.

3) Flams

This technique is similar to trills but only one hammer on happens, no pull offs.  My students have a hard time with this technique so don’t get too frustrated if you are having trouble at first.

Just practice hammering down the next finger immediately after you strike the first note.  In time it will become easy for you to make this sound.

4) Double Stops

This technique is great if you want to make a lot of sound as a soloist.  This involves using chord fragments to round out a solo and there are different types of double stops.

There are double stops involving bends and those that are static.  In some of these examples I am using part of the Mixolydian mode which is a great scale to use over blues progressions.

There you have it, video is below for reference.

See you next time with part 2!