Shed some light on this. Give me your thoughts

Hey, lately i have been wondering about soloing, and the different scales that you can use (also notes OUT of scales)
Don't you know the feeling of playing a boring solo? Especially in a regular 12 bar blues. It feels like there is not a whole lot of different moves that you can do. I have been thinking of ways to make things more interesting. Do you have any ideas on that?
Also, how do you practice playing an improvised solo OVER the chord progression. Landing and passing cool notes on the different licks and tricks.
The feeling that you get when a simple song goes into some different progression when the solo comes around. For example in this track.
Slash's Snakepit: Mean Bone..... link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avLRqD478xo

This is a killer way of creating a solo i think, that feels special by simply just changing chords in the solo section. I miss this kind of feeling when playing sometimes.
I just want to know how i can spice up my solos so that it's not only just the same blues scale and minor/major scale licks. Landing on sexy notes. Also i want to be better at identifying what scales i can actually use over that particular progression. How do i for example see what modes i can use over a particular progression.
Also a thing im working on, is blending minor and major blues scales notes. For example if the song key is in E minor and you play a solo using the E minor blues scale. How do i know when i can mix some major notes in there? check this solo as a perfect example of this. Link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wns4j-fZa7s

The solo starts of in E minor Blues, and i think it contains some Dorian notes aswell, Slash usually does that. And later in the solo it moves into major.

Any thoughts on this subject. I hope you feel what i mean. How do i identify what i can do solo/scale wise.

Hi -

I'm new here just checking out the forums and your post struck a chord with me (sorry for the pun!).

Regarding the first part of your post, I know what you mean. However, the pentatonic and blues scales aren't as limiting and boring as you might think. By listening to different players I've realized how they can do seemingly infinite things with these simple scales. BB King, Eric Clapton, SRV, Jimmy Page - much of what they do is in these scales. I remember figuring out a Steve Vai lick (opening licks to "For the Love of God") and couldn't believe it when I discovered it uses the pentatonic scale shape!

Lately I've been listening to a lot of Joe Bonamassa Live at the Royal Albert Hall. Jamming with some of the tracks on there has given me a lot of new ideas in phrasing using my same lame pentatonic scales.

I'm here to shore up my basic skills (never learned theory) and clean up and expand my technique. This isn't my first attempt. In the past I thought the magic bullet was learning new scales, but I've come to learn that that is only a small part of it - it's more feel, phrasing, and not getting into a rut.

A way to think of it visually would be black and white pictures - photographs, pencil drawings, etc. Some amazing images can be made with just 2 colors - black and white. How much more "boring" can it get than that! :-).

Rich

Yeah well, i kinda see what you mean :) And i agree, Joe Bonamassa is a master of the blues and pentatonics. Even though some of his playing is pretty repetative (or however you spell it)