What's MISSING From Your Pattern 1 Solos - Y105

Introduction

Pattern 1 is not the problem. The missing pieces are target notes, rhythm, and expression.

In this lesson, Lee shows three simple ways to make Pattern 1 blues solos sound more musical without learning new scale shapes.

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What You'll Learn

How to make Pattern 1 sound fresh again
Why chord tones make blues licks sound stronger
How rhythm changes the feel of familiar notes
How bends, slides, vibrato, and rakes add expression
Why great blues solos use more than just scale patterns

Target The Chord Tones

The first fix is to add guide tones from the chord. In the lesson, Lee starts with an A minor pentatonic lick and adds notes that target the A7 chord.

The flat seventh and major third give the lick a stronger blues sound because they connect directly to the chord underneath the solo.

Improve Your Rhythm

The second fix is rhythm. Even the same notes can sound completely different when the rhythm changes.

Lee compares a triplet-based lick with a more staccato sixteenth-note phrase. The notes still come from Pattern 1, but the rhythmic feel makes the phrase sound fresh.

Add Expression

The third fix is expression. Bends, vibrato, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and rakes can make familiar Pattern 1 licks sound more vocal and emotional.

These techniques help your solos communicate better because they connect more closely to the way people naturally hear melody and expression.

Practice Assignment

Play Pattern 1 in A minor pentatonic.
Create one lick that targets the flat seventh.
Create one lick that resolves to the major third over A7.
Play the same lick with two different rhythms.
Add vibrato, bends, slides, or rakes to make the phrase more expressive.

Continue Your Training

Related Lessons

Transcript

Lee here from Play Guitar Academy. Many blues players believe they've outgrown this pattern I just played, Pattern 1, because every solo starts sounding the same. But today I'm going to show you three simple ways to make Pattern 1 sound exceptional without learning other scale shapes. And we do that using three licks. So let's head over to the licks.

This lick here at the top, you can pause this if you want to learn it real quick, but I'm going to play it for you. This is an A minor pentatonic based lick with some notes thrown in here, some guide tones.

Okay, let's take a look. Let's go back over to the sheet here. We're starting at the fifth fret, which is where Pattern 1, 1, 4, 1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 4, 1, 4, and the key of A is going down the shape 5, 8, 5 on B.

That's all minor pentatonic, but now we're adding in a note this seventh fret here. This is borrowed from the major pentatonic, but the reason we're using it is we're going to bend up a half step. This is going to feature this eighth fret here. This is a G. This is the note, the flat seventh from our A7 chord. We're targeting that note with this bend.

It's a very cool sound. Now we're going to release, go down the scale, fifth fret, 7, 5 on the G string, and now we're going to add in another note. This is going to be the sixth fret in between those two.

This is the third, the major third of the A7 chord here.

We're targeting this chord all over the place, back and forth between minor pentatonic and chord tones.

We're going to end on a funkier note, that G again, just an octave down this time.

Very cool sound over that A7 chord. Now let's take a look at that last phrase in this first one.

This is starting off very just minor pentatonic going up the scale, fifth fret on the D, up the scale, bending the G string at the seventh fret, release, going back to the fifth fret, and then adding in that sixth, the C sharp, so we end on a note that has a sweet sound. The major third always sounds sweet when you put it in over top of that chord.

So using these target notes, the flat seventh and the third, making sure that you have those as you're playing and they fit with the chord that you're playing, it's going to sound great every single time.

But there's some other things that you can do. We're going to move on to fix number two, that's improving your rhythm. A lot of players will play the same rhythms over and over and over again, and even to themselves it sounds stale.

So let's take a look at number two here. Number two, if you notice, our first one had triplets. This one doesn't. This one is using sixteenth notes that are broken up. Lots of little rests in between all these sixteenth notes. Let me play the second line for you so you have an idea of what we're dealing with.

You notice that the rhythm is completely different there. One has the floating almost like a waltz, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, and the other one is targeted, almost staccato sound.

So let's take a look here at what we've got. Now we're starting in the same pattern, of course, where all these are in Pattern 1. So root to flat seventh to root, and then we're doing a sequence. So like down, up, down on the seventh. Now we're going to go to the next note of the scale, which is the fifth fret on the G string. Down, up, down. Then we're going to go to the seventh fret of the G string and do the same sequence, seven, five, seven, and then end on the E note, the fifth.

That's very, very, very minor pentatonic. No other notes thrown in there.

Then here we have, we're waiting for an eighth note. All sixteenth notes. This is the blues scale. We're adding in the flat five, starting on it, in fact.

Eight, five, eight, seven, five, and then we rest for a sixteenth note, and we do it again. Eight, five, eight, seven, five, and then end on the root right there. One.

So if you vary your rhythms, you can use the same notes all the time. But putting them in different places makes everything sound fresh and interesting. It's going to help your playing, just even staying in that one pattern.

But how about fix number three? We're going to add some expression. We're going to add expressive techniques, namely vibrato, bending, and slides.

Let's take a look at lick number three here. Let me get me out of the way so you can see it. There we go. This bottom line here, we have a bend. Well, actually, I'll play it for you first.

So I was adding in a ton of different things in this to make it sound interesting. There's no added notes in. This is all right from Pattern 1, but we're doing bends. We're doing vibrato. We're doing hammer-on and pull-off. And I'm also raking the strings. That's not written on here. Raking the strings to make it sound interesting.

So we're going to start on the highest note of Pattern 1, which is the eighth fret on the high E string. I'm going to rake into that note that's muting the strings, dragging my pick across there, and then only letting the one note come out, which is the eighth fret on the high E string, bending it up a full, and then coming back to the root with a little bit of vibrato.

Very vocal sounding. Now I'm going to do the same thing on the B string.

Now on measure two, we'll slide into the seventh fret and do some sixteenth notes. Just minor pentatonic, seven, five, seven, five, five.

And then finally we're going to end with a hammer-on and pull-off into some vibrato.

Now your vibrato, you can use moving your hand from the wrist. You can actually move the guitar itself. You can do a classical where you're just kind of moving your hand across. There's lots of different ways to do vibrato. Check out my videos for all of those.

But this is going to take all of the licks that you already play, the ones that sound stale if you start intentionally putting in these things, the slides, vibrato, bends. These are the ways that you're going to be able to communicate with your audience better.

Most people don't know anything about music, but they understand what they feel. And that usually goes back to the voice. And each one of these sounds like a singer would be singing though. So that's the reason we're bringing those threes up today.

Pattern 1 wasn't limiting you. You had a missing ingredient and that was adding a little bit of music into Pattern 1. Great players focus on notes, rhythms, and expressions. And that's what we did today.

If you want to go deeper into creating expressive blues solos without getting lost in endless scale patterns, I've got something for you. It's my Blues Elevation Toolkit. You can check it out in the description below.

Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next lesson. Bye bye.

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