Exotic Blues Guitar Licks That Make Your Blues Soloing More Fun
Emotion To Any Guitar Lick
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Want to spice up your blues lead guitar solos?
You’ve come to the right place.
Because in this lead guitar article...
I show you some of my favorite scales (and lead guitar soloing tricks) that make your blues soloing sound exotic and different from the blues soloing licks most lead guitarists play.
Now, obviously...
There is nothing wrong with traditional blues soloing lead guitar techniques.
(I love that sound myself.)
But if you want to go beyond the traditional sound...
You can.
And when you use the techniques in this article, I think you’ll find blues soloing becoming even more fun than before.
Emotion To Any Guitar Lick
EMAIL TO GET ACCESS
By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
To begin...
Watch this exotic blues soloing video that shows you 2 of my favorite scales to play when soloing over 12-bar blues that most guitarists never consider using.
Now, let’s go deeper.
Here are 5 more blues guitar soloing tricks you should know to achieve the exotic blues soloing sound in your playing.
Exotic Blues Soloing Tip #1: Learn Scales (The Ones You Use For Blues Soloing) In All Positions On The Fretboard
When you tell most guitarists to play lead guitar (whether a blues guitar solo or a solo in any other style) in the key of A minor, where does their hand almost always go?
Exactly – the 5th position of the guitar. The first box of the A minor pentatonic scale.
But ask them to play guitar licks in any of the other shapes of the scale? Suddenly their mind goes black.
And that is a big reason why most lead guitarists struggle to be creative in their guitar soloing... let alone play cool exotic blues guitar solos.
Solution?
Learn all 5 box shapes of the pentatonic scale. Why 5? Because there are 5 notes in the scale. And each note is the starting point of a new shape that can be used for guitar soloing.
So, the better you know all 5 shapes – the better your guitar soloing options, the easier it is to play exotic blues solos and the more fun you have playing lead guitar.
Here are my top tips for memorizing the 5 shapes of the pentatonic scale and improving your lead guitar solos:
- restrict yourself from using the lead guitar shapes you already know. Instead, transpose your guitar licks into the shapes of the pentatonic scale you are less familiar with.
This way you get more experience playing the shapes you still have to memorize (and avoid falling into the comfort-zone trap of playing the same guitar licks you always play) ... and master them a lot faster.
As a side benefit, when you solo using shapes that are newer to you, your brain is more engaged. As a result, you are more likely to create new guitar licks you’ve never played before.
This makes it even easier to make your blues solos sound exotic.
- practice memorizing guitar scale shapes away from the guitar. Like this: put your fretting hand on your picking hand’s forearm and pretend your picking hand forearm is a guitar fretboard.
Now, move the fingers up and down your arm – visualizing the frets in your mind's eye.
This allows you to get in more repetitions (away from the guitar) and greatly shrinks the amount of time needed to memorize the scale in all of its positions.
Watch this video to learn more tricks for memorizing all scale shapes on the fretboard:
Exotic Blues Soloing Tip #2: Practice Exotic String Bends
Most lead guitarists bend strings like this: they bend from one note (that’s in the key) to another note that’s also in key.
“And what’s wrong with that”, you ask?
Nothing... except it doesn't help to make your blues solos sound exotic.
What it does is make your guitar lick sound just like every other guitar lick in a blues solo.
How do you play exotic string bends in your blues solos?
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Answer: bend from a note that is ‘not’ in the key to a note that is. For example: bend from a #4 note up to 5. Or, bend from a b2 note up to b3.
I learned this guitar soloing technique from studying lead guitar licks of Marty Friedman (one of my favorite guitarists).
I’ve since adopted this idea into my lead guitar playing arsenal and today - it’s one of my go-to phrasing tricks for making blues soloing sound exotic.
Question: “But Tom Hess, if I bend from notes that are not in the key – won’t that make my blues guitar licks sound out of tune?”
Answer: Not if you do it right. To do exotic blues guitar bends the right way, don’t sustain the note you are bending from... but DO sustain the target note of the bend.
This ensures that your string bends have that cool dissonance (that makes your blues soloing sound exotic)... with enough control to still sound in-tune and pro.
Question: “Tom Hess, I have a hard time bending strings in tune when trying to play exotic blues guitar licks. What should I do?”
Answer: Here are simple ways to make your string bends in tune:
1. Temporarily tune your guitar down by a half step or a whole step. This makes it easier to control the strings during your string bends. As your technique improves, you can work your way back into standard turning.
As an aside, this (temporarily tuning down your guitar and gradually working back towards playing in standard tuning) is also a fantastic way to get back into playing guitar after a break.
2. (Temporarily) Use lighter strings to practice your lead guitar string bends. This has a similar effect to tuning down, but allows you to still play your exotic blues solos on the same frets without changing keys.
3. Practice bending smaller intervals. Instead of practicing whole-step bends (2 frets), bend only half-steps (1 fret on your guitar).
4. Use multiple fingers to bend strings instead of just 1 finger.
5. Use the hand position shown in the photo below to bend strings. Notice how the thumb is wrapped around the guitar neck and the base of your index finger (the spot where it connects to your palm) is pressed up against the fretboard.
Bonus exotic blues soloing idea: integrate string bends with lead guitar slide variations, including:
- Ascending slides – this is where you slide up from a lower pitch to a higher pitch.
- Descending slides – this is where you slide down from a higher pitch to a lower pitch.
- Backslides – this is where you play a note, slide up (or down) away from it and return back to the note. This lead guitar video shows how.
- Super slides – this is where you slide up (or down) by an interval of an octave or more. It looks and sounds like this:
- Re-articulation slides – this is where you play a note and immediately slide ‘into’ it from above (or below) in pitch.
Integrating these slide variations with string bends is a fantastic way to achieve a more exotic sound in your guitar licks and blues solos.
Exotic Blues Soloing Tip #3: Add Double Stops To Your Blues Guitar Licks
A double stop is a name for playing 2 notes at the same in your blues guitar licks.
But unlike the traditional blues soloing double stops (where you simply play 2 notes a whole step apart and bend the lower note up a whole step until the notes sound as a unison)...
I'm talking about playing actual double stops (where the 2 notes form beautifully dissonant intervals with each other) – making your blues lead guitar licks sound exotic.
This video shows lots of examples of what I mean:
Pro tip: combine double stops with vibrato.
You can do that in 2 ways:
1. If you have a vibrato bar (or a floating bridge), you can use one or both of them to add an even more exotic sound to your blues solos. Here Is what that looks and sounds like:
2. Simply use your fretting hand fingers to add vibrato to the double stops when sustaining them at the ends of your guitar licks in your exotic blues solos.
Pro tip: delay your vibrato instead of adding it instantly. Delayed vibrato sounds much more dramatic and emotional than instant vibrato.
To ‘delay’ vibrato, simply do this: play a note (or a double stop) and hold it out for half of a second to 1 second.
Then add vibrato.
For extra effect, you can also re-articulate the note (or double stop) a second time. Watch this guitar soloing video to see delayed vibrato in action.
Exotic Blues Soloing Tip #4: Add Rubato To Your Guitar Licks
What is rubato?
It’s a way to add musical tension to your guitar licks and solos by not playing the notes in strict time. Rubato happens when you suddenly speed up (or slow) down the notes you are playing without playing strict and clear divisions of a beat.
Note: there is a BIG difference between playing deliberate rubato and ‘not playing in time’.
The latter is a sign of amateur guitar playing. But the former? It’s enables you to achieve emotional and exotic blues guitar soloing and makes your blues soloing phrasing as unique to you as your fingerprint.
I first heard this style of phrasing by listening to guitarists like Jason Becker, Marty Friedman and Steve Vai and I’ve made it a big part of my lead guitar soloing.
Here is what rubato sounds like:
Exotic Blues Soloing Tip #5: Use Sweep Picking In Your Blues Solos
True story:
I once had a classic rock/blues student of mine ask me to teach him to apply sweep picking arpeggios to 12-bar blues soloing... but he worried he will struggle with sweep picking fast.
To his surprise, I showed him simple ways to make arpeggios sound way more bluesy than he was expecting (and feel easy to play), by:
- slowing them down (and explaining how many guitarists weirdly conflate ‘sweep picking’ and ‘fast playing’ as if one thing automatically means the other. News flash: they do not.)
- reducing the arpeggios to just 3 strings, to make them easier to play.
- having him play dominant 7th arpeggios to outline the 12-bar blues chords using slides, hammer ons and pull offs.
The result?
By combining this style of sweep picking with his usual phrasing, his blues soloing sounded every bit as ‘bluesy’ as ever, while giving him a ton of new guitar lick ideas he wouldn’t have come up with any other way.
Watch this video to see the resulting guitar licks sounded:
Moral of the story: there is a lot more to playing blues guitar than just using the pentatonic scale. Don’t be afraid to experiment with other ways to solo that go a bit outside the norm and you’ll often make your phrasing more exotic. (A great guitar teacher can give you a lot of ideas for how to do this.)
Now that you know how to use exotic guitar phrasing in your lead guitar solos, I’d like to help you transform the rest of your guitar playing into top-level kick-butt playing, even if you feel stuck right now and are having some self-doubts. I can help you with this in my personalized Breakthrough Guitar Lessons.
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