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Soloing over a slow blues is one of the most challenging things to develop for a blues guitar player. It not only requires the technical knowledge, but a complex expressive palette in order to tell a story to the listener.

Luckily, we have TrueFire’s own Corey Congilio to help us get up to speed with playing over slow blues tunes. In Slow Blues Guru, Corey takes you through performance studies inspired by Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mike Bloomfield, Jimi Hendrix, Gary Moore, and more!

In these free slow blues soloing guitar lessons, you’ll find three performance studies based on the work of these legendary guitar players, as well as an overview and breakdown for a solo inspired by Mike Bloomfield. Let’s get bluesy!

Someday Kinda Blues – Performance

Download the tab, notation, and jam track for this blues lesson on TrueFire.

This is an example where understanding major and minor and how to use them is important. I encourage you to listen to these performances a few times and really get the melodic content of these solos in your head. Once you’ve listened a few times, your ear will guide you!

At Night – Overview

Writing this solo was really fun because I payed homage to Mike Bloomfield. Bloomfield was an emotional player with a lot of personality. This example is in the key of E, and has some great aggressive moves as well as plenty of open string ideas. You’re gonna dig this one, trust me!

At Night – Performance

Download the tab, notation, and jam track for this blues lesson.

It’s important that you have a handle on all 5 pentatonic patterns in the key of E minor. E is such a great guitar key because you can really utilize the real estate of the fretboard.

At Night – Breakdown

The coolest thing about this solo to me is the use of open strings. When you’re in the key of E, you have plenty of open strings to work with. You’ll notice that I jump into that right at the start. Near the end of the solo I let the high E string drone through lots of the phrases. This is something you may not have done before, so give it a shot! To get that aggressive bluesy tone, I’m using a Tweed Fender Deluxe amp model and my SG! I think it’s a good combo!

None More Minor – Performance

Download the tab, notation, and jam track for this blues lesson on TrueFire.

If you’ve never played major or natural minor scales…now’s the time to really have a look at them, as you’ll be using a good amount of those sounds in this example.

Make sure to watch the full course on TrueFire to get even more slow blues guitar lessons from Corey Congilio. There, you’ll find 7 more performances and breakdowns with tab, notation, slo-mo, looping, and jam tracks included to practice on your own. Check it out now!