In a world where we’re so often encouraged to expand our vocabulary, learn more scales, play over complex changes and improve our technique, this example solo takes the contrary approach of exploring simple bluesy ideas over a single chord.
It does venture a little outside of the regular pentatonic shapes towards the end (check out Example 3), but this is the exception, rather than the rule. In this section we’re looking for interesting melodic lines instead of deliberately referring to specific chord tones, but – deliberately or not – this is what’s going on during the last four bars…
