Blues Guitar Soloing – Backing Track for the I-IV Change

In Blues Guitar Soloing there is one chord change that makes up much of what you will play. This is the I-IV change (said ‘one-four’ change). Isolating and practicing over this progression will take your blues soloing to another level. This progression is actually the foundation of many rock and funk songs so you guys might want to tune in, as well.

To practice this change, here is a short blues guitar backing track . It is a simple loop of two bars of D7 (the I chord) followed by two bars of G7 (the IV chord). As such, this blues jam track is considered to be in the key of D.

Blues Jam Track (1-4 Change) – Key of D

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To start, it is easier to use one scale, the Blues Scale, to play over both chords. This scale is shown below.

A more advanced soloing concept is to target each chord of the progression with a different scale. Two common scales to do this would be the Major Pentatonic and the Mixolydian mode. Each of these scales more closely fits the corresponding major quality of the dominant 7th chords we are soloing against. This opens up new and unique notes for each chord that are unavailable when using the same blues scale for both chords.

The trickier part of this approach is that the scale must change as the chords change. The advantage of this more advanced approach is that it will contribute to the sound of ‘making the changes’.

Below are the two scales for each chord. The major chord within each chord is highlighted with grey dots.

Try this idea against the jam track.

In the next lesson, we will look at some example licks to easily exploit the idea of different patterns for each chord of the I-IV change.

Until then, jam away and have fun!