Your First Solo

Soloing looks like it needs theory. It needs one shape.

The minor pentatonic scale is five notes that sound good over a minor key, arranged in a box shape you can move anywhere on the neck. Nearly every rock solo you have ever heard is mostly this, and a huge number of them are only this.

The track at the end of this lesson is in B minor, so the box starts at the seventh fret — put your first finger there on the low string and the shape falls under your hand.

Learn it going up and coming back down until your fingers know it without your eyes.

B Minor Pentatonic

B minor pentatonic. Five notes, repeating in every octave.

The box, two octaves from the seventh fret

Two notes per string, straight up and straight back down. First finger on the seventh fret, third or fourth on the higher one.

e
B
G
D
A
E

------------------------------------------7---10--|
----------------------------------7---10----------|
--------------------------7---9-------------------|
------------------7---9---------------------------|
----------7---9-----------------------------------|
--7---10------------------------------------------|

Now use it. This is the last solo section of Comfortably Numb — B minor, A, G and E minor, cycling slowly.

Do not run up and down the shape. Play three notes, then stop and listen for a whole bar. Then three different notes. The silence is not wasted time, it is what makes the notes land, and it is the single biggest difference between a beginner solo and one that sounds intentional.

Every note in the box works over every chord in this track. You genuinely cannot play a wrong one.

B minor, A, G and E minor. Three notes, then silence. Repeat.