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Practice Track: A Minor Blues

Here is a practice track for beginning or intermediate guitarists to sharpen up their minor blues solos. The Key is A minor – so use the A minor Pentatonic. For a more sophisticated approach, you can also make excursions into the D minor Pentatonic over the D minor Chord. For the E7 chord, try an E minor pentatonic, with some half tone bending on the G! That will take the G up to a G# to match the chord tone in the E7 chord (E, G#, B, D)

Another approach is to use the A natural minor scale, switching to the A harmonic minor scale (or just bending the G’s to G#) over the E7. The tempo is slow and the rhythm is steady to give you plenty of scope for exploring.

A minor Blues

|Am         |               |                 |                    |

|Dm         |               |Am           |                    |

|E7           |Dm         |Am           |                    |

The chords are a standard blues progression, but in a modern style, there is no final E7 chord in bar 12. Instead you will hear four distinctive organ stabs to alert you that you are coming back to the top again.

 

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Practice Track: Groove Bass

Here is a practice track for bass players. It is in the key of G minor, at a medium tempo. There is only one chord – a G minor played throughout, but interest is created by interspersing rhythm accompaniments and lead tracks using various guitar sounds and organ styles. This track is ideal for sharpening up the G minor pentatonic chops. The minor pentatonic scale is great for all kinds of groove based music, and is also useful for rock and blues as well. There is no bass line recorded on this track, so see if you can play along, and create some bass lines using the G minor Pentatonic scale. A good rule of thumb to start with is to play the root note on beat one of each bar. Have fun exploring!

Bass_Gm_Grrove

If you are not familiar with the G minor pentatonic scale, here is a fret board diagram. It shows two scale shapes that you can play with just fingers 1 and 3, which is easiest for less experienced players. In each case, start with your third finger on a G, and use your first finger to slide between fret one and fret 3 on the A string, or fret 8 and 10 on the D string.