Watch the Blues Soloing online guitar lesson by Chris Buono from Guitar Lab: Blues Soloing

There's no doubt about it: We guitarists LOVE to solo. And, what do we love most to solo over? The blues, baby! There's just something about diggin' into a root position minor pentatonic scale and blowin' lick after lick over a 12-bar blues at a hot jam - when you're in the zone it's pure bliss. But, did you ever stop to wonder what makes it all work? Or why a certain something you played worked so well over the chords you're soloing over? Perhaps more importantly, why didn't a certain something work? And, how do you play over those changes in Blues Progressions, anyhow? This course aims to answer those queries and many more so grab your axe and get a fresh 9-volt in that Tube Screamer-we have work to do!

Welcome to Guitar Lab: Blues Soloing - a thorough look into the how, what and why behind soloing over fresh sounding blues progressions of all kinds. Blues Soloing is a direct continuation of Guitar Lab: Blues Progressions where we take the 23 progressions introduced in that course and learn how to improvise over them. Like Blues Progressions this course is focused on a few key points that will make your blues soloing that much more effective. From intensely analyzing the relationship between your melodic device of choice and the chords you're soloing over (chord tones!) to the melodic voice leading that needs to be present within your licks to make it all come together; Blues Soloing will set you on the right road to becoming a formidable blues soloist making your jam session soloing excursions the talk of the town.

Blues Soloing features a gaggle of solos for you to dig into. For every set of three variations played per progression in Blues Progressions there's a solo designed specifically for it - that's 69 solos! The solos laid out for you in this course are meant to be memorable. So much so, they could very well be used as head melodies over the progressions giving you some serious firepower when hitting the next jam. The overall goal here in Blues Soloing is to show you how to make yours just the same.

Throughout the vat of solos you'll delve into important improvisational approaches such as:

-melodic voice leading
-motivic development
-stationary and movable permutations
-repetition
-call & response
-space

Making sure you can get your full geek on you'll find every last note played in the video segments in the accompanying Power Tab and PDF charts ready to be dissected in the shed. After viewing the lesson and printing your chart of choice be ready to rock with one of the included 69 backing tracks and get that mojo groovin'!

As for technique I hope you have some thick calluses 'cause you're going to be bending a LOT. In addition to the throng of whole step bends there will be an equal amount of an often overlooked bend - the half step bend. But, don't count out extended bends such as 1-1/2 and double whole step bends either. You'll also be coming across plenty of grace note hammer-ons, legato moves of all kinds and more!

If you haven't already installed the aforementioned 9-volt, get to it because you're gonna need some extra juice for this one. The 69 solos contained within this course are meant to be played with some grit in your sound. As always, if you're a POD person, the tones files are included and I have to say: They are quite delicious. I went overboard on tweaking this time around so enjoy.

OK, ENOUGH TALK-LET'S DO IT TO IT!

*** A big thank you goes to Steve Jenkins for laying down the stellar bass lines in every last jam track. Also big thanks to Chris Donlon of Beta Monkey for the completely cool drum loop libraries. Because of these two guys your jam tracks rock! And, hey, an overdue thank you to Brad Larsen for giving the world Power Tab. Kudos to you, Brad, wherever you are!

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