Why Great Blues Players Leave MORE Space

Great blues players know that silence is not empty. Space gives phrases room to breathe, creates anticipation, and makes the notes you do play feel more important.

In this lesson, Lee explains why guitarists often overplay, how rests can make a solo sound more conversational, and how simple practice exercises can help you gain control over when you play and when you stop.

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Podcast Episode

What You'll Learn

Why silence is one of the most overlooked tools in blues soloing
How space creates anticipation, tension, and release
Why overplaying can make phrases less memorable
How rests help separate musical ideas
How call-and-response phrasing depends on space
A simple rhythm exercise for practicing intentional rests

Why Guitar Players Overplay

Many guitar players try to fill every open space because silence feels uncomfortable. It can feel like something is missing, or like you do not know what to play next.

Lee points out that this fear can become a trap. Instead of letting the music breathe, players keep adding notes to prove what they can do.

Space Creates Anticipation

When you leave space after a phrase, the listener starts waiting for what comes next. That moment of anticipation creates tension.

When the next phrase finally arrives, it creates release. That is one of the reasons silence can make a solo feel more powerful instead of less complete.

Rests Clarify Your Phrases

A rest gives a phrase a clear ending. It lets the listener reset before the next idea begins.

Without space, everything can run together. With space, each phrase becomes more memorable and starts to sound like a statement.

Think Like a Conversation

Good blues phrasing often feels like conversation. One phrase asks a question, another phrase answers it, and the space between them makes the exchange clear.

Call-and-response soloing works because there is room between the call and the answer. That separation can make your guitar sound more vocal and more intentional.

Listen Longer, Play Less

Lee also encourages players to use their ears more. Instead of filling every moment with scale patterns, listen to how the notes fit against the chords and how each phrase feels in time.

Recording yourself can help you hear whether your phrases are breathing or whether they are running together.

Practice Assignment

Practice leaving notes out on purpose.

Start with quarter notes and count: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Choose one beat to leave silent.
Repeat the exercise while leaving out a different beat each time.
Try the same idea with eighth notes: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.
Apply the same approach to a short blues lick or chord rhythm.

The goal is to gain control over both parts of your phrasing: when you play and when you do not play.

Continue Your Training

Related Lessons

Cleaned Transcript

Welcome, friends, to the Play Guitar Podcast. I am Lee, and I'm here to help you become the guitar player that you've always wanted to be. Today we're going to be talking about something that most guitar players completely overlook, and that's silence.

More accurately, the intentional use of rests or space. Because some of the most musical moments in a blues solo, or any solo for that matter, happen when you're not playing. It's setting something up or adding tension.

Space is something that I never thought of until I was in a band, and I'd start playing all the time. You're playing and playing and playing, and then the bass player looks over at you. The drummer looks over at you, and they're like, are we ever going to stop and get to the rest of the song?

There are a couple reasons why I did that, and why a lot of people tend to overplay and try to fill something up. There's a fear in it. When you hear that there's nothing going on, you're afraid it sounds empty, or maybe it sounds like you don't know what you're doing.

That fear of not playing can put you in a little bit of a trap.

Another reason is that you might be in the habit of playing all the time. Constant playing. When we practice scales, of course we do all eighth notes, all sixteenth notes, triplets, and all those things. We don't really practice the rests enough.

The rests are extremely important.

A lot of people equate playing a lot with quality. I did for a long time when I was young. I thought, man, if I could play fast and have all these ideas and string them together, everybody will think it's great.

There was a July 4th concert on the Mall in Washington, DC, and the band I was playing with at the time was playing there. We had some gear that we had to use. I had my pedals, but that was it. I had to use someone else's amp, and it was a great amp. It was a Twin Reverb. It was the '65 reissue, I think. It was the blackface reissue.

I was playing everything I knew, and no one was really paying attention. So I thought, okay, let's try something else. There was a little harmonic there, a little feedback, and I just let it roll for a while.

The band heard it, they kind of got quiet, and then people started to pay attention. This one note that I was playing was getting more attention than everything else that I played. All of the years of learning went out the window, and this one note was getting people clapping.

So I figured, I have nothing to lose. Let's ride this thing as long as it can go. It kept going and going, and people were clapping and standing up.

That showed me that my conventional way of thinking, with lots of things going on all the time, didn't get the point across.

Space is another way of getting ideas across without having to string ten million notes together.

What does space actually do? It creates anticipation. We hear it, and we think something should be there. It gets attention. Then when you finally kick in after leaving some strategic space, it creates a release.

Space also clarifies phrases. If you stop after a phrase, it has a distinct ending. You give a little bit of time before the next one comes in, so it allows people to reset. It makes the ideas that you play a little bit more memorable.

The first lick that I played was the one that had straight notes in it, sixteenth notes and all that stuff. But the next one I played was taking the idea and adding in some strategic rests.

It starts off the same with a triplet, but instead of going into all that kind of stuff, I have a little bend that's quick and it has a rest. All of a sudden, that idea is chopped off.

Those little eighth-note rests mean everything. They separate the phrases. They make it sound like a statement, and it also makes you wonder what the next thing is that's going to be said.

How do you develop using space in your phrases? The first way is to think like a conversation. Think conversationally. That's almost like a question and answer.

You can also practice this kind of call and response. You might go down low and then play a part higher. That distance, separating the octave, is also call and response. It sounds like there are two voices there.

Another thing you can do is listen longer and play less.

Use your ears a little bit. Start to develop your ears. Work on hearing your scales. Work on listening to whether they sound good or not. Record yourself a little bit more. That always works.

The companion lesson demonstrates three practical phrase examples. It changes the way you perceive the licks. When we've done those examples today, I could hear voices when I was doing it. I heard something that sounds like conversations I've heard before.

Silence strengthens the phrase. If you're working on phrasing, and you're not sure what to do, start separating ideas a little bit more.

A great person to listen to as someone who puts a lot of space in his solos and creates a lot of tension by drawing out each lick is Eric Clapton. If you listen to the song "Old Love," for example, it's filled with that. Even in "Layla," there are strategically placed rests.

How can you practice these? I like to do eighth-note exercises. Practice leaving a note out. Start with quarter notes first. Count 1, 2, 3, 4, and leave out one beat on purpose.

Pick a beat to leave out on purpose. This is something you can try in your practice that will help you get control of when you play and when you don't play.

Players that we admire are not great because they know the most notes. We know the same amount of notes that they do. They're great because they know which notes are the important ones, which ones matter at a certain time, and just as importantly, they know when to stop.

Space gives your phrases room to breathe. It gives your ideas room to connect to each other, and it gives your listeners something worth remembering.

Great to spend time with you today. We have some really exciting things coming up for the podcast and for the lesson video. We're going to be practicing together. I'm going to have ideas that you can use in your practice each week.

This is going to be a lot of fun. I hope this becomes something where each week, when you're going to practice your guitar, you tune in, and this helps give you something new to practice. Until I see you in the next video, have a great practice, and I'll see you soon. Bye bye.

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