Latest / The Steve Stine Podcast / Play Better Blues Solos in Just ONE Position

Transcript

Play Better Blues Solos in Just ONE Position · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:35
  Steve: Hey, this is Steve Stein from Guitar Zoom Academy, and today we're going to be looking at some cool things that you can do in one position on the guitar when you're playing your blues.
• 0:43
  Steve: Now, this is gonna require you to be able to see a couple of different chord shapes and some scale shapes as well.
• 0:49
  Steve: So let's just break this down a little bit.
• 0:50
  Steve: I'm gonna be looking at the chords A, D, and E.
• 0:55
  Steve: Okay, so one, four, five, and the key of A.
• 0:58
  Steve: Now we could play these as A7, D7, and E7 to give it a little more blues feel as well.
• 1:05
  Steve: So here's what we're gonna do.
• 1:06
  Steve: We're gonna hike up here to the 12th fret and we're gonna visualize an A major chord sitting right here.
• 1:12
  Steve: Now this comes out of what we call the cage chord system.
• 1:15
  Steve: So if this is new to you, you have to just kind of work through this.
• 1:18
  Steve: So what I'm doing is I'm looking at the notes A on the fifth string, which is the 12th fret.
• 1:23
  Steve: I'm looking at here C sharp on the fourth string, which is the 11th fret, and then the ninth fret of the third string, which is my E.
• 1:31
  Steve: So that's my triad right there.
• 1:33
  Steve: That's the notes of the A major chord.
• 1:36
  Steve: Now it starts all over.
• 1:37
  Steve: This note is E.
• 1:38
  Steve: If I go here, this note is A.
• 1:43
  Steve: And then right here, I've got the note C sharp and then E all over again.
• 1:50
  Steve: Okay, so that would be the A major triad in two octaves.
• 1:57
  Steve: Sitting right there.
• 1:59
  Steve: Now at the same time, what as I'm looking at this, I want to start seeing some scales in there too.
• 2:03
  Steve: But let's finish up our chord sequence first.
• 2:06
  Steve: So we've got our A major sitting here.
• 2:08
  Steve: We've got D major, which you probably know, it's your six-string bar chord sitting right here.
• 2:12
  Steve: Okay, so we have 10, 12, 12, 11, 10, 10, a little bit easier.
• 2:17
  Steve: And then we've got our E chord that's sitting right here, which is our fifth string bar chord.
• 2:22
  Steve: So we have seven, nine, nine, nine, seven.
• 2:25
  Steve: So if we were to visualize those three things, the one chord, which is A, the four chord, which is D, and then the V chord, which is E.
• 2:41
  Steve: Now before we move on to the scale, let's first try and find that seventh as well.
• 2:46
  Steve: As I said, if we want to make it sound a little more bluesy, we can play A7 instead of A, D seven instead of D, and E7 instead of E.
• 2:54
  Steve: So I just want you to know where those would be.
• 2:55
  Steve: So if we go back into this A and we play this, A, C sharp, E, A.
• 3:02
  Steve: Now think about it this way.
• 3:03
  Steve: Anytime you have a root, all you have to do is move back a whole step from the root to get your minor seventh or that bluesy sounding seventh.
• 3:16
  Steve: Okay, so if we were playing in this shape and we went and we slid back, for instance, to that seventh, it's gonna make it sound really bluesy.
• 3:28
  Steve: It's gonna sound cool.
• 3:29
  Steve: Well, let's think about that over the D chord.
• 3:31
  Steve: Again, we want to find the D's.
• 3:33
  Steve: We have a D here, we have a D here, and we have a D here.
• 3:38
  Steve: So any of those D's, sorry, can be slid back to create the seventh of that chord.
• 3:46
  Steve: And then of course, E, same thing.
• 3:48
  Steve: We have E or E here, and we can get that sound.
• 3:53
  Steve: Okay?
• 3:54
  Steve: So just so you know, major chords, that's what we're working with first.
• 3:58
  Steve: The second thing is if we want it to sound bluesy, we can always try and emphasize the seventh, the minor seventh, that blue seventh, if you will, to give it that kind of sound.
• 4:09
  Steve: So the next thing we have to do is look at the scale, okay?
• 4:12
  Steve: Now, if we were looking at the A major pentatonic scale in this position, we could start on 12 and we could play 12 and then 9, 11, 9, 11, 10, 12, and 9, 12.
• 4:26
  Steve: That's the way it would this would look.
• 4:33
  Steve: So that would be A major pentatonic sitting right there, okay.
• 4:37
  Steve: Now what we want to do is we want to start visualizing how this A major triad and the A major pentatonic overlap each other.
• 4:52
  Steve: Okay?
• 4:52
  Steve: They're one and the same, but the pentatonic scale has got some added notes.
• 4:56
  Steve: So we've got a 12, which is belongs to both of those.
• 5:00
  Steve: And then we've got a nine here that does not belong to both of those.
• 5:04
  Steve: So that's a pentatonic note that doesn't exist in the chord necessarily.
• 5:08
  Steve: And then 11, that's part of both.
• 5:12
  Steve: And then we got this nine, which is part of both, and we got this 11, which is not part of both.
• 5:19
  Steve: So the scale is really nice because it allows us to walk through the triad.
• 5:24
  Steve: We can play the triad, but when we use those other notes, you see, we can fill that out by walking through there.
• 5:36
  Steve: Now, uh, let's keep going here.
• 5:38
  Steve: So the next thing I want to do is I want to show you another note that's really important to add into your blues, which is what I was always refer to as the minor major twist.
• 5:47
  Steve: So what happens is when we're playing this, if we play A and we go to C sharp, if I go right in front of that and I add in this note right here, this note's actually what we call a minor third.
• 5:59
  Steve: It's coming from the minor A minor chord.
• 6:01
  Steve: We don't want that, but when we play it in conjunction with the major, it sounds really cool.
• 6:06
  Steve: So if I go like this, so I can play 12 and then go 9, 11 is what I normally play.
• 6:18
  Steve: Well, now I can play 9, 10, 11.
• 6:22
  Steve: Okay, and it sounds kind of cool.
• 6:26
  Steve: And its octave is on the 13th fret of the second string.
• 6:39
  Steve: So this note's really unique because we can play it along with everything else, or we can play it instead of something else.
• 6:48
  Steve: Like I might do that where I play to the 10 to the 9 and skip the 11 entirely.
• 6:55
  Steve: Or going forward, I might play the 10 to 11 and skip the 9.
• 7:02
  Steve: See, the thing about blues is that it has a lot to do with phrasing.
• 7:05
  Steve: It's not just the notes that you're playing or the scale that you're playing, it's learning how to phrase.
• 7:11
  Steve: And sometimes when you find notes that are kind of outside, like that seventh or this new note here, this minor major twist thing that I'm talking about, you learn how to try and phrase those.
• 7:23
  Steve: And see, now what I'm doing is I'm ending up on a note that it's part of the triad there, that's part of that A major chord.
• 7:39
  Steve: And it starts having a little bit more of a blues ism to it.
• 7:42
  Steve: So if I was playing over an A chord, and I come up here, I could always drop back to that seventh if I wanted to to get that sound as well.
• 8:04
  Steve: So you want to kind of mess around with just the A to begin with.
• 8:15
  Steve: Now, all these things I'm playing, you might not understand everything that I'm doing, but you can always just push rewind and watch a little bit of this and try and grab one of these little phrases and mess with it a little bit.
• 8:27
  Steve: So I'm visualizing the chord, and then I'm seeing the scale outlining it.
• 8:33
  Steve: And then I'm seeing these what we'll call color tones, these other notes that are around it as well that I can mess with.
• 8:50
  Steve: Okay, now let's take a look at the four chord.
• 8:52
  Steve: So the D chord comes along, we can still see that same major pentatonic scale, but now we start visualizing, you know, like 12, 11, 10, and 10 up on top there, too.
• 9:08
  Steve: Like that's part of the D triad.
• 9:10
  Steve: So when that D chord comes along, we can always move into.
• 9:15
  Steve: Now we don't have to play all those notes, but if I visualize that off of this pentatonic, that becomes a target.
• 9:22
  Steve: That's still a target, which it was on my major or my A as well.
• 9:28
  Steve: Now that becomes one as well.
• 9:32
  Steve: And this one as well.
• 9:38
  Steve: So you can stay in A major pentatonic, and then just kind of when that D chord comes up, and then here comes A again, so then we might get back in there again.
• 9:55
  Steve: Now here comes the E chord.
• 9:58
  Steve: So we've got 999 sitting right there, which that note is the same.
• 10:05
  Steve: That note's different.
• 10:06
  Steve: So instead of just playing this note, what sounds really cool is if I go in from a slide here, okay, because that's the major third, so it's that minor major thing.
• 10:21
  Steve: Now the E's a little bit harder to mess with at this point.
• 10:28
  Steve: And then maybe it goes back to the D.
• 10:32
  Steve: And then A.
• 10:42
  Steve: So you gotta work on, again, phrasing.
• 10:45
  Steve: You gotta think about not just playing a bunch of notes, but here comes D, what am I gonna do?
• 10:49
  Steve: Here comes E, what I'm gonna do.
• 10:50
  Steve: So there's one other thing I want to show you, and I know I'm packing a lot in here, but hopefully this is something you can use a little bit, is that you can actually change the the keys that you're in over each one of these chords.
• 11:03
  Steve: So instead of playing A major the entire time, which you can totally do, what you might want to do over that four chord, that D chord, you might actually wind up going to D minor pentatonic.
• 11:15
  Steve: Now, the rest of this is still sitting there like it was before.
• 11:21
  Steve: But you might throw something like that in over that D chord, for instance.
• 11:26
  Steve: Or E comes up.
• 11:29
  Steve: Now I can go up here and I could play E major pentatonic by playing 12, 9, 11, 9, 11, 9, 11, 9, 12, 9, 12.
• 11:40
  Steve: Sounds a little country though.
• 11:42
  Steve: So what might be kind of cool is when I go to that E, I go to minor pentatonic over the E.
• 11:46
  Steve: So what I would do is I would play 7, 10, 7, 9, 7, 9, 8, 10, uh 7, 10.
• 11:55
  Steve: So it's just like your A major pentatonic.
• 11:58
  Steve: Only we're doing again, I don't want to confuse you, but we'd be doing G major pentatonic, which is E minor pentatonic.
• 12:06
  Steve: They're called relative major and minor.
• 12:07
  Steve: So I could play that over that.
• 12:09
  Steve: So let's say, again, break this down.
• 12:11
  Steve: I've got A.
• 12:12
  Steve: So I go here.
• 12:16
  Steve: Here comes D.
• 12:17
  Steve: So then I move in here.
• 12:21
  Steve: But maybe I want to go minor a little bit.
• 12:26
  Steve: And then here comes A again.
• 12:27
  Steve: So then I head back into and here comes E.
• 12:37
  Steve: I go in E minor pentatonic, which might sound kind of cool.
• 12:41
  Steve: Again, there's lots of options, and that's the fun thing about blues is that there isn't any one way to approach this.
• 12:47
  Steve: What we've learned is we could stay in A major pentatonic the entire time.
• 12:52
  Steve: And we could just land on A's the entire time.
• 12:54
  Steve: But what makes it a little bit better is if we bump it up and say, okay, let's be an A major, but let's try and go to something over A, over D, and over E.
• 13:02
  Steve: But our palette is A major.
• 13:04
  Steve: Then we bumped it up again and said, okay, let's actually change keys for each chord.
• 13:10
  Steve: Over A major, I could play A major pentatonic.
• 13:13
  Steve: I could certainly play A minor pentatonic as well as another option.
• 13:17
  Steve: That's the beauty of major style blues, is that you can play major and minor whenever you want.
• 13:22
  Steve: You can mix and match them, and that's where the real power of blues is.
• 13:25
  Steve: Over the D chord, you could have stayed in A major.
• 13:29
  Steve: Right?
• 13:29
  Steve: You could have stayed in A minor.
• 13:31
  Steve: But we know we can follow, we can chase that D around.
• 13:34
  Steve: We can go to D minor pentatonic or D major pentatonic.
• 13:37
  Steve: And when the E comes up, we can do the same thing.
• 13:39
  Steve: We can go to E minor or E major pentatonic, either one of those.
• 13:42
  Steve: Or we could have stayed again in A major pentatonic.
• 13:46
  Steve: So the the thing about blues is it's not just a matter of learning a scale and then playing that scale up and down.
• 13:53
  Steve: It's learning a scale and then learning how to manipulate it.
• 13:56
  Steve: Maybe throw some color notes in there like some of the notes we talked about today.
• 14:00
  Steve: We can call them lots of different things, but learning some of the isms that make blues sound like blues, and then learning how to manipulate that by stepping outside, just using one thing over and over and over, one scale or one position, and looking for other things that we can do.
• 14:15
  Steve: It's a language, just like anything.
• 14:16
  Steve: It takes time to learn how to do it, and you got to find the things that are appealing to you, right?
• 14:21
  Steve: You might love BB King and you don't really care for Joe Bonamasa, or it might be just the opposite.
• 14:26
  Steve: You love a Joe Bona Massa, but you're not really into BB King, or you love both of them, which is great.
• 14:32
  Steve: Just saying that their approaches, all of these players, their approaches are different.
• 14:36
  Steve: And so the key to this is figuring out what stuff in there uh is appealing to you that you can actually create something that sounds musical with.
• 14:45
  Steve: So anyway, take care, stay positive, keep practicing.
• 14:48
  Steve: If you struggle with this kind of stuff and you're like, man, I really wish I could learn how to do this.
• 14:53
  Steve: I just I get confused, I get lost when you know guys like Steve start talking about all this stuff.
• 14:58
  Steve: Do me a favor, check out Guitar Zoom Academy.
• 15:00
  Steve: Go over to guitarzoom.com, you can schedule a call with one of us.
• 15:03
  Steve: We can talk about what the academy is, how it works, see if it's something that works for you, and you can learn how to do all this kind of stuff.
• 15:09
  Steve: So anyway, take care and I'll talk to you soon, okay?