Best Guitar Scales for Blues Soloing
Fri, 04/10/2015 - 3:51pm
Gotcha! That title would definitely have captured my attention when I began to get seriously interested in playing blues guitar.
Among my first inspirations was the initial wave of British guitar heroes (plus Hendrix, of course), and after painfully roughing out a few solos by ear I found what seemed to be the common ingredient: the minor pentatonic scale.
When I began to gravitate toward traditional blues, I thought that it must just be a different scale blend – mix the minor pentatonic with the major pentatonic and add a flat-five now and then – but my attempts to turn scales into legitimate-sounding blues solos never seemed to hit the mark. At the same time, I noticed that traditional blues guitarists never mentioned scales – if they talked about their playing at all, they would usually say something mysterious like “I just play what I hear.”
I was confused: If blues solos don’t come from scales, then where do they come from?
It took a while, but I eventually figured out that “play what you hear” isn’t vague at all – it’s a literal prescription for how to play blues.
The Blasters on Tour February 2015
Wed, 01/28/2015 - 1:43pm
Topics: guitar, keith wyatt
This February finds the Blasters on the road through the Southwest, starting on February 5 in Las Vegas and winding up in Long Beach on the 22nd after a long loop through Texas and back. Here’s the complete itinerary:
Paul Gilbert and Keith Wyatt talk Guitar with Phil Hulett
Mon, 01/12/2015 - 12:12pm
Paul Gilbert and Keith Wyatt were recently featured on the Phil Hulett & Friends radio show where they talk about their online guitar lessons at ArtistWorks and how it all works. Phil Hulett once interviewed a young Paul Gilbert back in his Racer X days, and still remembers what Paul said when asked about the secret to playing guitar so good: "Practice." Sounds about right. Speaking about the differences between rock guitar vs. blues guitar, here's what Keith said: "The two worlds are more alike than they are different, it's just a matter of picking and choosing your path for music."
Transcribing Solos on Guitar
Mon, 01/05/2015 - 4:50pm
One of my students here at ArtistWorks recently asked me on the Blues Guitar School forum to name some influential solos that I have transcribed over the years. It seemed like a good topic for discussion, so here’s an expanded version of what I wrote:
To paraphrase an old saying, “if you steal one idea it's plagiarism but if you steal a hundred it's research.” In my opinion, the best way to learn a style is to emulate the masters, and learning solos teaches you not only licks, but how a great player arranges ideas over time. A classic solo will also reveal new layers as your own ear, skills, and knowledge expand, so you can keep coming back to it for new insights. In most cases I never wrote these down but instead memorized them on the guitar, which after all is where you want the ideas to “live.”
In no particular order, here’s a sample of solos that I have memorized note-for-note at some point; some I still know pretty well while others would need some dusting off, but they’re all in there somewhere.
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