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  • Yeah sure - I'm the opposite of expert but can try. I started by learning the major scale all up the neck, there are only 6 positions and you probably know most already.

    If you know those shapes, you already know all the natural minor scales (eg A natural Minor is C Major, etc...) If you sharpen the 7th on the minor, you have the harmonic minor scale which is pretty easy to pick out.

    The thing that got me started is the dorian - it's the second mode of the major scale, so in an A minor blues, you can play the G major scale over all the changes. It gives a cool more jazzy flavour.

    When you get bored noodling with that, try the harmonic minor scale. This sounds dope over the V chord. So in an A minor blues, try playing A harmonic minor (particularly the #7th - g#) over the E7 chord.

    The last one was the whole tone scale of the Vth over the I chord. So in A minor blues again, when you're playing Amin7, try some licks on a E whole tone scale (E, f#, g#, a#,C etc...) This give a more out there jazz sound which can resolve back really nicely to any of the other scales.

    Also for variety, you can swap out chords and also stick a II chord in. So in the same A minor blues, instead of playing Amin7, Dmin7, E7, you can do what is apparently called a tritone substitution (3 whole tones up) and play Bb7 instead of the E7. This slinks really nicely back down to Amin7. You can add the II chord (Bmin7) in front of the V chord to make the turnaround a II,V,I. And you can also do a tritone sub on the II and play Fmin7 instead.

    Allman Bros used the substitutions a lot and you'll probably notice you've been using them anyways by accident if not design (at least in my case....:))

    Anyway hope that's helpful - I really don't know what I'm talking about. I dipped in to this by experimenting and had fun trying....

  • This is really helpful mate, thank you! Very well explained. Mostly spending my time trying to get to grips with a banjo at the moment and neglecting the guitar but this could be just what I need to reinvigorate my utterly vanilla soloing efforts...

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