This guitar solo is something that I came up with when I was really getting in to the blues fusion style of music. Blues fusion is basically blues played fast with some distortion on the guitar. This style also uses more than just the regular minor pentatonic scale or blues scale to play over the chords. Some arpeggios and sequences have been thrown in to give you an idea of how you can use elements like these over simple chord progressions. The progression that we will be using for the solo is, B minor 7, A, and E. We have provided you with the notation and tab for the entire solo. There are couple of sequences and arpeggios that can be a bit tricky. The up and down stokes indicators for your picking hand have been included on the tab. You don't have to strictly follow them, but playing this solo would probably be easier if you did.
Let's take a look at some of the spots in this solo that may give you some trouble. The first lick of the solo starts out with a big whole step bend on 10th fret of the high E string. Be careful, the next part of the lick involves some string skipping. If you have never done anything like this before, don't worry. Just take it slowly and it will come to you. The first sequence of the solo comes in half way through measure three. This is basically a B blues scale sequenced three notes at a time. This sequence is played legato for the most part, so make sure to keep an eye on the right hand picking indicators at the bottom of each line of tab.
Measure five gives us the first arpeggio of the tune starting on the 14th fret with the 4th finger. Again, check out the picking indicators. You will notice that there are multiple consecutive downstrokes throughout this B minor 7 arpeggio. This indicates that you should be sweep-picking those notes. If you don't know how to use this technique yet, check out the lessons on sweep-picking. In measure 7 there is a really cool lick that uses the open B string quite a bit. This involves a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs so take note of the picking indicators. If you look at the second half of measure eleven you will see that we are sweep-picking another arpeggio. This time we are using a D major arpeggio starting on the 5th fret with the 4th finger.
The scale sequence that starts on measure fifteen is based on a B minor pentatonic scale. This is almost the same pattern as the one you will find in the lesson "Pentatonic Sequencing in 6's". There is a bit of variation on the lick, so be sure to pay close attention and work out exactly what is being played here. This lick uses strict alternate picking, so use this opportunity to work on your right hand accuracy.
Work this solo out slowly and before you know it you will be able to play the whole thing with no problem. Take all the ideas presented in this solo and used them to expand your own playing vocabulary.
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