How To Play A Blues Guitar Solo And Sound Pro (With Just 4 Notes!)

Just like you, I used to suffer from not being able to play killer blues guitar solos.

I was constantly hitting notes out of key. I didn’t know where to go on the neck. And, I was confused by all the different scale patterns, and music theory I thought I had to know.

It was miserable.

And I feel for anyone in this place.

But I’ve helped so many older retired students play the blues like they’ve never thought possible, inside my programs on my site. I specialize in blues guitar.

So today, I wanted to share an easy blues guitar solo that lets you sound like a pro with just 4 notes.

And this relies on an almost ancient method used by the old-school blues masters. They did this on countless songs. It’s so simple that many of today’s players would just laugh at it.

But this is to their own detriment. Because it’s been used on more recordings and hits than you can count.

So let’s get started with this easy blues guitar solo lesson.

The first thing you need to know is that this solo is going to be played over the…

12 Bar Blues 

You may be wondering, “What is the 12 Bar Blues?”. Well, the 12-bar blues is a popular chord progression used in countless songs. It follows a specific structure often using just 3 chords. Here the rhythm is going to be using the chords E7, A7, and B7.

For E7, I’ll use all 6 strings like this:

A7 I play from the 5th string down like this:

And finally, for B7 I play this from the 5th string down as well like this:

Musicians like Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson, Eric Clapton, and B.B. King have used the 12 bar blues at the core of many of their biggest hits.

So now let’s get into the…

Blues Guitar Solo

The first riff in the solo is going to start on the note B on the 4th fret of the 3rd string. Then we’ll walk up to C# at the 6th fret, and then finally play E on the 5th fret of the second string.

Now, I said the entire solo uses just 4 notes, so those are the first 3 notes (B, C#, and E). Rhythmically the lick is going to start on beat 4, and continue over the bar line into the downbeat of the next measure

This is what I would consider a “call” in a “call & response” type of guitar solo. “Call & response” is a powerful technique in blues guitar solos, and it's a great way to add depth and interest to your playing.

Then we have the response which shifts down to the 4th and 5th strings. Begin by playing the 5th fret on the 4th string, and then end with the 7th fret on the 5th string. Here we’ll use an eighth-note rhythm, and play these two notes on beat 4 like this:

The notes of this “response” part of the solo are just G, and E again. So there is two Es a high E and a low E. But they are both still Es. So that’s how this fits into just a 4 note solos. To recap all the notes used are E, G, B and C#.

Now notice when I play the G note on the 4th string 5th fret, that I give that one just a little pull. This creates a bluesy inflection and makes your solo sound like it’s speaking the true language of the blues. (Which is what I help my students in my programs do.)

This simple lick (using just 4 notes) is going to be used for about 90% of this easy blues guitar solo.

From there we have one little variation we are going to play during the turnaround. The turnaround in a blues is often the last two bars, or in this case, the last 4 of the 12 bar blues. The idea with the solo here is to give us a little reprieve from the main theme and then send us back to the top of the form.

Without adding any new notes, this can be done by repeating the first part of the solo twice like this:

And then finishing it off with the ending part twice like this:

To recap this entire idea, all we have done is take a simple lick, repeat it over and over for the first 8 bars of the blues. Then add a little twist to the ending. And you’ve got a pro-sounding easy-to-play blues guitar solo, with just 4 notes.

You may be wondering…

How To Create Your Own Blues Solo

Your next step is to write your own blues guitar solo. And if you’re confused about which notes are going to sound good and how to move about the fretboard?

Get your hands on my FREE blues scale PDF guide right here below to correct this now:

Jon MacLennan