Why ONE Note Will Make Your Solos Sound Connected - Y104

If your guitar solos sound disconnected from the chord progression, this lesson will help you fix that fast. In this video, Lee from Play Guitar Academy shows you how targeting just ONE important note from each chord can instantly make your blues solos sound more connected, musical, and intentional.

You’ll learn how to target the 3rd of each chord in a blues progression so your phrases naturally follow the harmony instead of sounding random or aimless.

Whether you already know your pentatonic scales or you’re trying to sound more like the players you admire, this lesson will help bridge the gap between scales and real musical phrasing.

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What You'll Learn

Why scales alone can make solos sound aimless
How chord tone targeting creates stronger melodic phrasing
Why the 3rd of the chord is one of the most powerful target notes
How to find the major 3rd quickly on the guitar neck
How to connect pentatonic licks directly to chord changes
How to make blues solos sound more resolved and intentional
How to apply chord tone targeting over A7, D7, and E7 blues chords

Why Solos Sometimes Sound Aimless

A lot of players spend years learning scale patterns but still struggle to make their solos sound connected to the music underneath.

The issue usually is not the scale itself. The issue is that the solo is not following the harmony.

Scales create movement, but chord tones create resolution.

When you begin targeting important notes from the current chord, your solos immediately start sounding more musical and intentional.

The Secret: Target The 3rd Of Each Chord

In this lesson, Lee focuses on targeting the 3rd of each dominant 7th chord in a standard blues progression.

In the key of A blues, the chords are:

Each dominant 7th chord contains:

Root
3rd
5th
Flat 7th

The 3rd is especially powerful because it defines the chord quality and creates a strong sense of connection when your solo lands on it.

How To Find The 3rd Quickly

Lee demonstrates a simple visual shortcut for finding the major 3rd from the root note.

Using the root note on the low E string:

Find the root with your 2nd finger
Move diagonally back one fret on the next string with your 1st finger

Examples:

A root → C# is the 3rd
D root → F# is the 3rd
E root → G# is the 3rd

This simple visualization gives you a fast way to connect your solos directly to the chord progression.

Using Pentatonic Licks With Chord Tone Resolution

Lee demonstrates how standard minor pentatonic licks can sound unfinished when they never resolve to a strong chord tone.

By slightly adjusting the ending note and landing on the 3rd of the current chord, the lick suddenly sounds complete and connected.

For example:

Over A7 → resolve to C#
Over D7 → resolve to F#
Over E7 → resolve to G#

Even though most of the lick still uses familiar pentatonic scale notes, the ending note changes how the entire phrase feels.

Why This Works So Well

The reason this sounds musical is because your solo begins reacting to the harmony underneath.

Instead of sounding like random scale movement, your phrases now:

Follow the chord changes
Create stronger resolution
Sound more melodic
Feel more intentional

This is one of the fastest ways to level up your blues improvisation without learning dozens of new scales.

Practice Assignment

Play a simple 12-bar blues in A
Use your normal A minor pentatonic scale
As each chord changes, target the 3rd of that chord
Practice resolving your licks on those notes
Listen carefully to how much more connected your solos sound

Start slowly and focus on hearing the relationship between your phrasing and the chord progression.

Continue Your Training

Related Lessons

Transcript

Welcome, Lee here from Play Guitar Academy.

If your solos don't follow the chords and you get lost as the chord progression moves or maybe you're sounding aimless with your solos, this video is for you.

By the end of this, you're going to be able to follow the chords and sound more connected in your blues guitar solos.

This is something called chord tone targeting.

I've done a number of videos about this, mostly talking about the root note, knowing the root notes of the chords as they go.

But there's another note that we can target.

This one note is going to allow you to really sound great over each chord progression that you play.

What happens is a lot of times, you spend a lot of times learning all of your scale patterns and that's great and they get you in the ballpark, but you start to hear other players and you're not sounding quite like they are.

So we need to take a look at the chords.

We need to match the chords.

You're the melody when you're playing a solo, but we have to pay attention to the harmony.

The harmony is the chord progression that goes by.

So in this instance, we are in the key of A.

We're going to play an A blues: an A7, a D7 and an E7.

And what we're going to do is try and find the third of each chord.

Now each one of these chords has a certain number of notes.

In A7, we have a first, third, fifth, flat seven.

These are the notes that make up the chord.

In D7, we have the same thing: first, third, fifth, flat seven.

And E7 as well too.

We're trying to get that third.

So the third is if we know where the root is, this is your A and you go up two whole steps.

This note here, two whole steps up is your major third in this chord.

This is a C sharp.

Now I'm going to show you a quick way of finding that without having to go through all this.

You can make a diagonal line here.

So our root note with our second finger on the low E or even on the A string on the low E and then first finger one fret back on the next string.

This is your root A and this is your major third, C sharp.

Our next chord is D7 and I'll do the same thing.

My diagonal line, so here's my D and this is an F sharp.

F sharp is the third of D.

And now on my E7 chord, I'll do the same thing.

There's a G sharp.

E and G sharp, E is the first, G sharp is the third and back to the one chord.

So what we're going to do is I have a tablature here I'm going to share with you right now.

And these are some licks in an A blues.

And this first one that I'm playing is just a standard old minor pentatonic lick.

And over this chord, it doesn't sound very finished.

Everything sounds up in the air.

Now look what I did right next to it.

Seventh fret, fifth fret, seventh fret, bend the seventh, up to the fifth.

These are all A minor pentatonic scale choices.

Seventh fret, but now we end on the sixth.

Listen to how nice that sounds.

It matches this chord perfectly.

We finished out that phrase with the third.

Remember that's the C sharp.

This is an octave of that C sharp is sixth fret on the G string.

Now our next chord is a D7.

And we have this lick here.

So seventh fret bending on the G.

So this is all minor pentatonic.

First, seventh fret up, fifth fret, seventh fret on G, fifth fret on G, seven on D, fifth on D, and then sliding back one that's not in the scale to this note here.

That's the F sharp.

That's the third of D.

That's going to sound really nice over the D7 chord.

And then in our last one, I have all three of them together.

So we'll take a look at our first lick.

We're starting on the highest note, or actually we're starting on the A in our A minor pentatonic going down the scale, five, eight, five, seven, five, seven, and going to the sixth.

That's our G sharp.

That is the third of our E chord.

And then now we'll start on the eighth fret of the B string and down the scale.

And ending on the fourth of the D string, that's our F sharp, that's our third of the D chord.

And then finally, I do the first lick again where I go to the C sharp, that's the third of the A major.

I'm going to play these for you over the backing track.

Here's the first one that goes to the third of A dominant seventh.

There it is.

Now here's the one for the D chord.

You hear that third at the end there.

Back to the first one.

Now here's our turnaround.

There we go.

I have one little mess up there.

This is live.

I'm not editing any of this stuff.

So we're having a good time with that.

So basically, as you go through the chords, making sure you have one note that perfectly fits each chord as they go and your solos are gonna stop sounding aimless.

Remember that scales sound like movement.

And that's important.

You want to move.

You want to go up and down in your solos, but you have to figure out where you're going when you're moving there.

And that's knowing what some of the strong notes from the chords are as you go through.

So I hope these little tips helped you today.

Try it out in your blues soloing this week.

And if you need any help with your blues soloing, head over to Blues Solo Breakthrough.

It's my free six-part blues course.

You can find the link in the description and I'll see you in the next video.

Bye-bye everybody.

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