Simple Blues Soloing System

The blues lives between the b3 and the 3. The pentatonic box doesn’t tell you that.

Most players learn the blues through the minor pentatonic box. Every note fits, none of it sounds like the records, and after a while every solo comes out the same. The box isn’t the problem. The problem is that it treats five notes as equals, and it leaves out the notes that make the blues sound like the blues.

This book swaps scales for three positions on the neck and a handful of intervals. You learn what each interval sounds like, what it’s for and where it sits, and you add them one at a time, in the same order, in every position. There’s very little to memorise. Everything hangs off four notes.

Then it shows you how to make those intervals follow the chords, which is the part most blues books skip.

What’s in it

• The b3 to 3 bend, the 6, the blue note and the 2 (or 9), and what each one actually does
• Three positions that cover nearly the whole neck, built up one interval at a time
• How the positions overlap, so you can slide from one to the next mid-solo
• How to Apply It All: which notes to land on over A7, D7 and E7, and why
• The twelve-bar bar by bar, with one note to aim for in each bar
• How the same notes become the 9ths, 13ths and 7#9s when the rhythm player dresses up the chords
• A practice order, and where the positions sit in every common blues key
• Printable diagrams of all three positions and the chord tones for each chord in each position
• Every diagram labels each note by its interval, so you always know what you’re playing.

Who it’s for: players who know a few chords, have probably got stuck in the pentatonic box, and want to sound like the blues rather than like a scale.

Revised 2026 edition. Rewritten and redrawn throughout, with a new chapter on playing the changes, a printable reference section and a practice plan. 33 pages, PDF, 8.5 x 11.

Also available in the Blues Bundle.