3 Simple Arpeggios To Use To Finally Play Perfect Blues Guitar Solos

One of the things that a lot of my students have emailed me about on my website and in my programs is that when they are improvising either they're playing along with backing tracks or jamming with a band. And when they play their solos and they finish a lick, a lot of the times they feel like they're ending on a wrong note, or they're not quite landing how they would like in the musical phrase.

So in this video I want to talk about playing over a blues in the key of G and give you just some simple landing points that you can use in your solos right away.

Alright so let's get straight into it now if we're playing a blues in the key of G typically we're going to have just 3 chords as our essential blues pattern, and those chords are going to be G, C and D. 

Now in the Blues a lot of times those chords are all played as sevenths so that's going to be a G7 a C7 and a D7. Each one of those chords is actually made up of four notes. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at those exact four notes for each chord and we're going to stay in just one position here we're going to stay based around this third fret here.

And this idea can actually be worked out all over the entire guitar neck, that's a long term sort of vision for this, but in this video we're going to focus on just this one area.

Let's start with the G chord. Now the G chord or the G7 it's full name is going to have the notes g b d and f. So let me show you a great way of outlining those notes here we're going to start on the third fret of the low E string and then we'll go to the second fret on the a string then the fifth fret on the a string then go to the third fret on the fourth string and then fifth fret. That's actually one octave there we've got the notes g b d f g. So it's straight up the arpeggio basically which is breaking up the chord then we'll continue with this pattern we'll go g b d f g.

So what I played there was: starting on that G I went to the third string fourth fret, second string third fret and then up to the sixth fret. Then ending there on the third fret of the first string ,and that is the same note as this G just two octaves up.

So that would be the entire G7 arpeggio. Now any one of those notes if you stop on them they will sound good over a G7 chord. You want to practice knowing where those notes are on your guitar and then also just playing this in eighth notes ascending and descending.

So that's our one chord now from there we're going to look at what I call the four chord or the C7 chord here in the key of G. For that we're going to start on the third fret as well and we're gonna go, three, six, then go to the fifth string and go three, then the fourth string two, five, third string three, five, second string just five and then the first string three, six.

Now in a C7 chord the notes are going to be C, E, G and then Bb.

Check this out this would be G, Bb, C, E, G, Bb, C, E, G, Bb.

So it's all just those same notes worked out in this area of the guitar so practice that going up and then coming back down. Now the final chord we're going to look at is the D7. Now that's going to be our five chord. In that chord we have the notes D F# A and C.

Now for this pattern we're going to start on the second fret of the low E and we're going to play two, five, then go to the fifth string three, five, then we'll go to the fourth string four, third string two, five, second string three, first string two, five.

Okay so the notes Here go F#, A, C, D, F#, A, C, D, F#, A. So again you can see we're using those notes D, F#, A and C. But working them out all in the same position so that gives you all three chords of the Blues the one four and the five mapped out there here it is one more time just to review G7

[Music] then we have C7 our IV chord [Music]

and then the five chord D7 [Music]

So next what I'm going to do is I'm going to demonstrate just a simple solo over a g blues. And I'm just going to be moving from one chord to the next. And as the chords change I'm going to be hitting the notes of each chord that's happening. I'm just going to try and as I mentioned land on those target notes because those notes will always work, because they're the notes in the chord . So here's an example of that [Music]

So that entire solo basically just used those patterns and I kind of weaved in between the chords. As the chords change I go to the notes in the arpeggio for each chord. So practice those arpeggio patterns and then see if you can use those notes again as landing notes. This is going to fix that problem of resolving where you may feel like you're playing a solo, and then you land on a note that sounds out. You've got to make sure you're hitting those notes in the arpeggios and landing on a chord tone. 

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