Blues Chord Tones Exercises

Develop Your Lead Guitar Skills With Chord Tones Targeting In a Blues Context

In this article, I want to suggest some simple exercises useful for developing chord tone solos and note targeting ability in a Blues context.

We will be using dominant chords, which are at the foundation of the Blues; to get chord tones under our skin, we're going to play dominant arpeggios focusing on different target notes.

Practice these exercises until the movements from one chord to another become second nature, and your Blues lead guitar skills will benefit a lot.

On your free download page you find the tabs and the Guitar Pro files for all the exercises.

Download Tabs and GP files

Arpeggio Shapes Used In The Exercises

We'll move around A7 (I), D7 (IV), and E7 (5) chords.

For these exercises, we want to stay in one fretboard position, (around the 5th fret), using different fingerings, so here below are the arpeggio shapes that we're going to use.

A7 Dominant Chord Shape

The A7 dominant chord is composed of A (1), C# (3), E (5), and G (b7).

A7 Dominant Chord

D7 Dominant Chord Shape

D (1), F# (3), A (5), and C (b7) are the notes in a D7 chord.

D7 Dominant Chord

E7 Dominant Chord Shape

The E Dominant Seventh chord is made up of the notes E (1), G# (3), B (5), and D (b7).

E7 Dominant Chord

Why do we have to use arpeggios instead of scales?

Chord tones soloing, which consists in playing melodic lines using the notes of the backing chords as main notes, is a very effective way to generate solos that perfectly fit with the harmony.

In fact, using chord tones as building blocks in our phrasing, has a nice effect to make perceiving the harmony in the lead guitar part.

Of course, you are free to use also any other notes, like notes in the scales and even chromatic passages, but your melodic lines should be mostly based on chord tones.

Chords Movements

The base structure of a 12 bar Blues song is:

12 bar blues song structure

To allow you to focus on chord tones targeting, the following exercise will be based on the main chord changes that usually appear in a 12 bar blues song:

  • I to IV (A7 to D7)
  • I to V (A7 to E7)
  • V to IV and to I (E7, D7, A7)

Try to hear the chord changes in your melodic lines.

Blues Chord Tones Soloing Exercises

I to IV Movement (A7 to D7)

I-IV Exercise 1 - Ascending Arpeggios

In this first warmup exercise you'll be playing ascending A7 and D7 arpeggio starting from the root of each chord. Notice how well the chord change is highlighted by the solo guitar.

I IV guitar chord tones targeting exercise 1

I-IV Exercise 2 - Descending Arpeggios

Same as the exercise before, but this time we're going to play descending arpeggios. To start each bar from the corresponding chord root, we have to make a shift to fret 10th (D):

I IV guitar chord tones targeting exercise 2

I-IV Exercise 3 - Targeting the 3rd

Here we will be targeting the 3rd of D7 chord, which is F#, when the chord change appears.

I IV guitar chord tones targeting exercise 3

I-IV Exercise 4 - Targeting the b7

In this last I to IV chords exercise, we will play the b7 (C) on the D7 chord.

I IV guitar chord tones targeting exercise 4

I to V Movement (A7 to E7)

I-V Exercise 1 - Ascending Arpeggios

Here we play two ascending arpeggios, A7 and E7, starting from each root.

Notice the resolution feeling when the song ends, moving from E7 to A major.

I V guitar chord tones targeting exercise 1

I-V Exercise 2 - Descending Arpeggios

Here we play two descending arpeggios, A7 and E7, starting from the upper octave roots.

I V guitar chord tones targeting exercise 2

I-V Exercise 3 - Targeting the 3rd

Here, on E7 we're going to target the 3rd, G#:

I V guitar chord tones targeting exercise 3

I-V Exercise 4 - Targeting the b7

Finally, when the A7 to E7 switch appears, we target the b7 (D)

I V guitar chord tones targeting exercise 4

I IV I Movement (E7 to D7 and A7)

V-IV-I Exercise 1 - Ascending Arpeggios

In this exercise, we're going to play an ascending arpeggios starting from each root: E7, D7 and A7.

V IV I guitar chord tones targeting exercise 1

V-IV-I Exercise 2 - Ascending and descending arpeggios mix

In this exercise, we play an ascending arpeggio on E7, then a descending arpeggio starting from the b7 on D7 (C), and a descending arpeggio from the root on A7.

V IV I guitar chord tones targeting exercise 2

V-IV-I Exercise 3 - Ascending and descending arpeggios mix, targeting the 3rd of A7

Same as the exercise above, but on the A7 chord we will be targeting the 3rd (C#):

V IV I guitar chord tones targeting exercise 3

V-IV-I Exercise 4 - Ascending and descending arpeggios mix, targeting the b7 of A7

Finally, we will land on the b7 (G) when the A7 chord is played.

V IV I guitar chord tones targeting exercise 4

Blues Chord Tones Exercises - Moving Forward

I hope you get some inspiration from these simple exercises.

Chord tones are the Holy Grail of great guitar solos: instead of playing boring scales up and down, we can mostly focus on certain notes (guess which they are? use this tool) and come out with melodic lines that flow nicely with the harmony of the tunes.

There are a lot of things you could do starting from these concepts:

In my complete ebook, Scales Over Chords | Learn How To Play The Right Scales Over Any Chord, you'll find some tables showing which scales match well with the chord tones of any kind of chord.

That's all for today, we can download the Guitar Pro files and the guitar tabs in pdf format on your free download page (if you are already a subscriber you should have received the link, check your email or write me).