“One of the hardest things about expanding our technique is going ‘against the grain’ of learned patterns”: Rewire your lead playing with four soloing ideas inspired by contemporary blues maestros

Joe Bonamassa plays a Gibson Les Paul Standard at the Grammys. He wears a dark suit, dark shirt and shade.s.

This is a lesson in ‘modern blues’ – that may seem a little ambiguous at first glance, so to be more specific, I’m referring to the inclusion of unusual and non-pentatonic phrases alongside more traditional ideas.

The example solo was played as a continuous live take, but we’ve broken it up into four sections to make it easier to digest. The more modern lines either take the shape of arpeggios (and fragments of these) or pentatonic ideas that are more influenced by players such as Joe Bonamassa and Eric Johnson, rather than the more ‘classic’ vocabulary of B.B. King or Eric Clapton.