Slow Blues in D minor

This is a genuine 1^st take solo played over one of the generic blues backing tracks I use in my lessons. The chord sequence here is pretty straightforward; it’s a minor 12 bar blues 12/8 time (counted “1 & a 2 & a 3 & a 4 & a”).

Here are the chords to the track:

|Dm |Gm |Dm | % |

|Gm | % |Dm | % |

|Am |Bb Gm |Dm |A7 | (Dm)

And here is the tab:

Click here to download the solo.

Click here to download the backing track.

The bulk of this solo uses the D aeolian mode (D E F G A Bb C) which is the same thing as D minor pentatonic (D F G A C) with an additional E & Bb notes. These extra notes are there because of their presence in the underlying chords (see below):

• Dm = D + F + A
• Gm = G + Bb + D
• Am = A + C + E
• Bb = Bb + D + F
• A7 = A + C# + E + G

Notice how often a lick ends on, or is centred around, a note from the chord happeneing at that particular moment. If you can develop this skill, you will end up sounding very melodic.

Apart from the notes mentioned above there are one or two instances of C# being used (6^th fret, 3^rd string). This is simply a “passing note” – a wrong note played briefly to add some colour. Also used is the D harmonic minor scale (D E F G A Bb C#). This is an excellent scale to use over the A7 – Dm chord change at the end of the solo.

Finally, the solo was played on a PRS Santana SE (the cheap one) loaded with Seymour Duncan 59 humbuckers. I was plugged into an AWARD SESSIONMASTER JD10 MKII pedal & then straight into the soundcard. I recorded the piece using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 where I also added delay & hall reverb to the guitar sound.