
Take a deep look inside this ubiquitous little workhorse, and consider a few easy mods that can make it sound and perform even better.
There are a lot of mods that can be done on a Blues Junior—the affordable, lightweight, and smallest member of Fender’s 12" combo family. These include replacing tone caps, swapping out the transformer, electrolytic cap upgrades, reverb tank mods, and more. Just google “Fender Blues Junior Mods” and prepare to be overwhelmed.
But how many of these mods are really necessary? It’s fair to assume that if you own a Blues Junior you were attracted to both its price of $749 street and at least some elements of its sound, which falls into the range of classic Fender voices, with clarity and punch. So, as PG’s “Silver and Black” columnist and resident guru of fenderguru.com, let me wade through some of the popular mods and make some recommendations about a few I think are actually beneficial, affordable, and easy to accomplish—resulting in more punch, volume, and warmth in your tone. Specifically, I’m talking about using extension cabinets, adjusting the bias by changing the resistors, replacing those electrolytic caps, and adding a resistor to tame and darken the reverb.
Before we get there, however, let’s take a look under the hood of this humble working-player’s Fender. The 15-watt, all-tube Blues Junior was introduced in 1995. It weighs only 30 pounds and measures 16" x 18" x 9", making it smaller and lighter than a Princeton, although it holds a larger 12" speaker.
Although smaller than the Princeton, the Fender Blues Junior has a larger speaker and more wattage, with a 12" speaker compared to the Princeton’s 10", and 12 watts compared to the Junior’s 15.
How Low Can We Go?
The Blues Junior was introduced before the trendy low-wattage-amp era began, and even in the digital era, players still appreciate the Junior’s printed circuit board (PCB), manual knobs, and tubes in its preamp and power amp sections. There have been many revisions over the years, including minor changes in circuitry and components, different speakers, and the addition of a fat switch that boosts the mids and pushes the preamp stage into quicker distortion.
There are three models in the current Blues Junior IV lineup. The black Tolex amp has a Celestion A type speaker, the racing green model has a Jensen C12Q, and the lacquered tweed model comes with a Jensen C12N. They all share the same circuitry. There’s also a tube in the phase inverter, while there is a transistor-driven reverb and diode rectifier. The early Blues Juniors with green circuit boards were made in the U.S., until Fender moved production to Mexico in 2001. The Mexico-made amps have a cream-colored circuit board.
PCB amps are a little more complicated to work on than handwired amps. You must be gentle and careful with wire cutters and soldering irons to not damage the small connections. It is easy to break the board’s connection traces and pins, or accidentally touch a high voltage point in the circuit. Be careful should you venture inside.
The Tale of the Tubes
So, what can we draw from inspecting the amp and reading the schematic of a Blues Junior? The control panel has volume, master, treble, middle, bass, reverb, and fat switch controls. Reading the schematic, I find that the tube layout and circuit functions are:
V1 12AX7: The first half of the tube handles preamp gain stage one before the volume and fat functions, and the second half powers preamp gain stage two, after volume and before the EQ/tone stack.
V2 12AX7: The first half powers preamp gain stage three, after the EQ/tone stack and before the master volume, and then the phase inverter. The second half of the tube’s output is not in use.
V3 12AX7: The first half juices the phase inverter’s phase one; the second half handles the phase inverter’s phase two.
V4 and V5: That’s the home of the EL84 power tubes.
Just like the Princeton Reverb, there are three gain stages in the preamp circuit. The power amp circuit design is also based on a classic Fender black- and silver-panel-era recipe. It has dual EL84 power tubes in a push-pull Class AB configuration with fixed bias and a negative feedback loop. This means we should expect a nice, clean black-panel-style tone before the amp breaks up.
Before the power tubes sits a proper, high-performing, long-tail phase inverter based on the two available amplifier functions in the single V3 12AX7 tube. All Class AB push-pull amps need a phase inverter that splits one sine wave signal into two signals with opposite phase that are fed into each power tube. The Princeton Reverb has a weaker phase inverter than the Blues Junior, and the Blues Junior has a bigger loudspeaker but a smaller speaker cabinet, which we will get back to in a moment.
The small cabinet is the most significant bottleneck with the Blues Junior. At home, it works well for me, but onstage it gets too boxy and thin. The 12" speaker doesn’t have room to breathe in that small cabinet and would benefit greatly from a bigger space. You can change the tone by swapping the loudspeaker, but you won’t get more punch and bass response.
Here’s an interior look at Jens’ own Fender Blues Junior. Space is of the essence in this mighty mite of an amp.
Extended and Amended
Bigger extension cabinets are by far the easiest way to increase the spread and punch of a Blues Junior. Good speaker combinations are closed or semi-closed 1x12, 1x15, or 2x10 cabs. The Blues Junior expects an 8-ohm speaker load but will handle anything between 4 and 16 ohms. Since 8 ohms give you the most headroom, I recommend disabling the built-in speaker entirely and sending all the power to the bigger extension cabinet for a bigger tone.
If a bigger extension cabinet isn’t enough, you could consider upgrading the output transformer to a larger one. Some will argue that the Junior’s small output transformer is a weak point, limiting fullness and bass response. I, however, think the modest power transformer is properly sized for this small amp. It is, after all, supposed to be a low-wattage amp with early breakup. A bigger OT is not the right medicine in such a small combo, in my opinion, unless you’re always driving an extension cabinet.
Fixing the Fixed Bias
Before we leave the power amp section, I must mention that the Blues Junior is famously known for having a too-hot fixed bias setting on the EL84s. Juniors benefit from a cooler bias, which also increases tube lifetime. Since there is no available bias pot, you have to adjust the bias by changing the values of the two resistors—a 22k/R31 and 33k/R37, or a R52 and R51 in more recent models. This is especially helpful if your amp wears out EL84 tubes fast. The good news is that Fender has improved the latest model IV with a cooler bias setting.
This photo shows the location of the R51 resistor in the Blues Junior circuit, important in recontouring the bias.
So, you’ll need to reduce the amp’s bias current to between 25 mA and 30 mA, from the factory-set 42 mA. (You’ll need a bias probe to measure the bias. To learn more about using a bias probe, see Jeff Bober’s story “Amp Man Returns, to Explain Tube Bias” in Premier Guitar’s June 2023 issue or online at premierguitar.com.) The simplest way to accomplish this via reducing the value of a resistor is to add another resistor in parallel. You simply solder a resistor on top of the existing one on the front side of the circuit. Twist the legs of the new resistor around the old ones a couple of times so it stays in place. That way, you don’t have to remove the original resistor. Then, warm up and apply the soldering tin to the legs. It’s that easy. I recommend adding a 220k resistor in parallel with the original 33k to see where that leads you. If you need to reduce more, use a smaller resistor or add another one in parallel until you are between 25 mA and 30 mA.
As far as tubes go, the circuit design will allow lower gain tubes—such as a 5751 or a 12AU7—in the preamp V1 and V2 positions. But you’d lose volume and break-up. I find that the amp’s sweet spot, meaning the transition between clean and distortion, is already pretty much where I want it, and I like the usable range between the volume and master volume controls, so I would advise against inserting low-gain tubes.
The tone stack and EQ balance is well-designed, too, with a nice, usable range in the bass, mid, and treble controls. The Junior can do both sparkling cleans and crunchy distortion. The mid control offers more mids than the scooped Princeton. With the mid knob set at max, I’m able to get some British-style distortion. If you think that your Blues Junior sounds a little glassy, you should experiment with other loudspeakers. Inserting a broken-in Celestion Greenback or a Jensen P12Q would easily make cranked tones smoother or the clean sound more authentic-vintage Fender. The Blues Junior III I’ve been playing lately comes with a Fender-labeled speaker made by Eminence—a good, all-round speaker with nice sparkle and a firm bottom end.
Doffing the Caps
Next up: a highly recommended maintenance mod. Electrolytic filter caps are important components in terms of noise, loudness, and clean headroom. The cheap, low-quality caps that come in blue or grey are a well-known problem with the Hot Rod Deluxe and Blues Junior. The good news is, they are quite easy to swap out. I recommend replacing these if you hear any 50Hz hum or see any signs of cap leakage. There are several cap replacement kits available online for the Blues Junior, running from about $60 to $100.
Note the 14 circled electrolytic capacitors in this photo. Filter cap replacement kits are affordable and widely available online.
Start by replacing the four largest capacitors: three with a value of 22 uF and one with a 47 uF value. Again, it’s simple. Just clip the legs off the factory-installed capacitors as close to the caps’ bodies as possible, and remove them. Then, twist the new caps’ legs around the old ones and solder them in place. Just be careful with both your clippers and soldering iron around the PCB. If that doesn’t get the results you want, replace the smaller caps, too.
Moving on to the reverb, I can understand the cost-efficiency decision that Fender made with the simplified, transistor-based circuitry. Not having a tube-and-transformer-based reverb lowers expense and weight, and there are fewer things that can fail. Luckily, there is a proper spring reverb tank in the back of the amp. In fact, the Blues Junior I, II, and III are famously known for having too much reverb. Anything above 2.5 on the reverb dial and the amp swims in overwhelming and bright ’verb.
Another recommended, and cheap, mod is to add an 82k resistor in parallel with the original 220k/330k in the reverb circuit, to tame and darken the reverb. This goes parallel to the R44 (220k) resistor on the made-in-Mexico board or the R50 (330k) resistor on the made-in-U.S. green PCB. Once again, an easy fix. As in the bias adjustment mod we covered earlier, we solder a new 82k resistor on top of the existing 220k on the front side of the circuit. How? By twisting the leg of the new resistor around the old one a couple of times so that it stays in place, and then applying the soldering tin. Voilà!
To restore the Junior’s classic Fender reverb sound, a new resistor should be wired in place atop the R44 factory resistor, circled in green.
With this mod, the reverb sounds more like the classic black- and silver-panel ’verbs, but with a wider knob-control span. I have read that the early made-in-the-States models have a darker reverb tone and might not require this move. But if you do this and find change isn’t enough, you may want to experiment with replacement reverb tanks with different decays.
So, that’s my take on this popular little warrior tube amp, and some easy mods. Even without changing the circuitry at all, with the Blues Junior, for a little money you get a lot of vintage Fender tone with a modern twist.
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Well-designed pickups. Extremely comfortable contours. Smooth, playable neck.
Middle position could use a bit more mids. Price could scare off some.
$2,999
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II
A surprise 6-string collaboration with Cory Wong moves effortlessly between ’70s George Benson and Blink-182 tones.
Announced at the 2025 NAMM show, Cory Wong’s new collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man scratched an itch—namely, the itch for a humbucker-loaded guitar that could appease Wong’s rock-and-R&B alter ego and serve as complement to his signature Fender Strat. Inspiration came from no further than a bandmate’s namesake instrument. Vulfpeck bassist Joe Dart has a line of signature model EBMM basses, one of which uses the classic StingRay bass body profile. So, when Wong went looking for something distinctive, he wondered if EBMM could create a 6-string guitar using the classic StingRay bass body and headstock profile.
Double the Fun
Wong is, by his own admission, a single-coil devotee. That’s where the core of his sound lives and it feels like home to him. However, Wong is as inspired by classic Earth, Wind & Fire tones and the pop-punk of the early ’90s as he is by Prince and the Minneapolis funk that he grew up with. The StingRay II is a guitar that can cover all those bases.
Ernie Ball has a history of designing fast-feeling, comfortable necks. And I can’t remember ever struggling to move around an EBMM fretboard. The roasted maple C-shaped neck here is slightly thicker in profile than I expected, but still very comfortable. (I must also mention that the back of the neck has a dazzling, almost holographic look to the grain that morphs in the light). By any measure, the StingRay II’s curves seemed designed for comfort and speed. Now, let’s talk about those pickups.Hot or Not?
A few years ago EBMM introduced a line of HT (heat-treated) pickups. The pickups are built with technology the company used to develop their Cobalt and M-Series strings. A fair amount of the process is shrouded in secrecy and must be taken on faith, but EBMM says treating elements of the pickup with heat increases clarity and dynamic response.
To find out for myself, I plugged the StingRay II into a Fender Vibroverb, Mesa/Boogie Mark VII, and a Neural DSP Quad Cortex (Wong’s preferred live rig). Right away, it was easy to hear the tight low end and warm highs. Often, I feel like the low end from neck humbuckers can feel too loose or lack definition. Neither was the case here. The HT pickup is beautifully balanced with a bounce that’s rich with ES-335 vibes. Clean tones are punchy and bright—especially with the Vibroverb—and dirty tones have more room for air. Individual notes were clear and articulate, too.
Any guitar associated with Wong needs a strong middle-position or combined pickup tone, and the StingRay II delivers. I never felt any significant signal loss in the blended signal from the two humbuckers, even if I could use a bit more midrange presence in the voicing. The midrange gap is nothing an EQ or Tube Screamer couldn’t fix, though. And not surprisingly, very Strat-like sounds were easy to achieve for having less midrange bump.
Knowing Wong’s love for ’90s alt-rock, I expected the bridge pickup to have real bite, and it does, demonstrating exceptional dynamic range and exceptional high-end response that never approached shrill. Nearly every type of distortion and overdrive I threw at it sounded great, but especially anything with a scooped-mid flavor and plenty of low end.
The Verdict
By any measure, the StingRay II is a top-notch, professional instrument. The fit and finish are immaculate and the feel of the neck makes me wonder if EBMM stashes some kind of secret sandpaper, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt a smoother, more playable neck. Kudos are also due to EBMM and Wong for finding an instrument that can move between ’70s George Benson tones and the hammering power chords of ’90s Blink-182. Admittedly, the nearly $3K price could give some players pause, but considering the overall quality of the instrument, it’s not out of line. Wong’s involvement and search for distinct sounds makes the StingRay II more than a tired redux of a classic model—an admirable accomplishment considering EBMM’s long and storied history.
Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay II Cory Wong Signature Electric Guitar - Charcoal Blue with Rosewood Fingerboard
StingRay II Cory Wong - Charcoal BlueTube Amp Doctor has reissued one of the company’s mostsought-after products: the TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ small bottle power tube is back inproduction after a 5-year absence.
The TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ is the tube that has made TAD so popular with boutiqueamp manufacturers and vintage tone enthusiasts since 2003. A direct replacement for 6L6 and5881 tubes, it’s a remake of the small bottle GE6L6GC and has the same warm lower midrangeand silky top end as the classic GE versions of the 1950s and 1960s. Like the historic RCA5881, this tube features exclusive Blackplate anodes and a side getter.
The TAD 6L6GC-STR Blackplate™ and the TAD 6L6WGC-STR Blackplate™ feature TAD’sexclusive black-plate designs, gold grid wire, double getter construction, no-noise filaments and1.2mm thick heavy duty glass. This tube is approximately 80mm high (without pins) and canreplace 5881 and 6L6WGB tubes.
The newly reissued tubes feature the original design and raw materials from old stock, availablein limited quantities as long as the old stock raw materials are available. They’re the perfectchoice for vintage tweed and black panel amps such as the 1960 Bassman, Twin, Showman orSuper Reverb. The complex midrange and sweet heights are a class of its own. The TAD6L6WGC-STR is recommended for classic tone with warm cleans and rich, sweet mids whenpushed – and it’s great for fat jazz or blues tones.
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In challenging times, sometimes elemental music, like the late Jessie Mae Hemphill’s raucous Mississippi hill country blues, is the best salve. It reminds us of what’s truly essential––musically, culturally, and emotionally. And provides a restorative and safe place, where we can open up, listen, and experience without judgement. And smile.
I’ve been prowling the backroads, juke joints, urban canyons, and VFW halls for more than 40 years, in search of the rawest, most powerful and authentic American music. And among the many things I’ve learned is that what’s more interesting than the music itself is the people who make it.
One of the most interesting people I’ve met is the late Jessie Mae Hemphill. By the time my wife, Laurie Hoffma, and I met Jessie Mae, on a visit to her trailer in Senatobia, Mississippi, she’d had a stroke and retired from performing, but we’d been fortunate to see her years before at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival, where she brought a blues style that was like quiet thunder, rumbling with portent and joy and ache, and all the other stuff that makes us human, sung to her own droning, rocking accompaniment on an old Gibson ES-120T.
To say she was from a musical family is an understatement. Her grandfather, Sid, was twice recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. While Sid played fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, keyboards, and more, he was best known as the leader of a fife-and-drum band that made music that spilled directly from Africa’s main artery. Sid was Jessie Mae’s teacher, and she learned well. In fact, you can see her leading her own fife-and-drum group in Robert Mugge’s wonderful documentary Deep Blues(with the late musician and journalist Robert Palmer as on-screen narrator), where she also performs a mournful-but-hypnotic song about betrayal—solo, on guitar—in Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint.
That movie, a 1982 episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (on YouTube) where she appears as part of Othar Turner’s Gravel Springs fife-and-drum band, and worldwide festival appearances are as close as Jessie Mae ever got to fame, although that was enough to make her important and influential to Bonnie Raitt, Cat Power, and others. And she made two exceptional albums during her lifetime: 1981’s She-Wolf and 1990’s Feelin’ Good. If you’re unfamiliar with North Mississippi blues, their sound will be a revelation. The style, as Jessie Mae essayed it, is a droning, hypnotic joy that bumps along like a freight train full of happily rattling box cars populated by carefree hobos. Often the songs ride on one chord, but that chord is the only one that’s needed to put the music’s joy and conviction across. Feelin’ Good, in particular, is essential Jessie Mae. Even the songs about heartbreak, like “Go Back To Your Used To Be” and “Shame on You,” have a propulsion dappled with little bends and other 6-string inflections that wrap the listener in a hypnotic web. Listening to Feelin’ Good, it’s easy to disappear in the music and to have all your troubles vanish as well—for at least as long as its 14 songs last.“She made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag.”
The challenge I’ve long issued to people unfamiliar with Jessie Mae’s music is: “Listen to Feelin’ Good and then tell me if you’re not feeling happier, more cheerful, and relaxed.” It truly does, as the old cliché would have it, make your backbone slip and your troubles along with it. Especially uptempo songs like the scrappy title track and the charging “Streamline Train.” There’s also an appealing live 1984 performance of the latter on YouTube, with Jessie Mae decked out in leopard-print pants and vest, playing a tambourine wedged onto her left high-heel shoe––one of her stylish signatures.
Jessie Mae was a complex person, caught between the old-school dilemma of playing “the Devil’s music” and yearning for a spiritual life, sweet as pecan pie with extra molasses but quick to turn mean at any perceived slight. She also spent much of her later years in poverty, in a small trailer with a hole in the floor where mice and other critters got in. And she was as mistrustful of strangers as she was warm once she accepted you into her heart. But watch your step before she did. On our first visit to her home, she made it clear that she had a gun—a .44 with a pearl handle that took up the entire length of her handbag and would make Dirty Harry envious.
Happily, she took us into her heart and we took her into ours, helping as much as we could and talking often. She was inspiring, and I wrote a song about her, and even got to perform it for her in her trailer, which was just a little terrifying, since I knew she would not hold back her criticism if she didn't like it. Instead, she giggled like a kid and blushed, and asked if I’d write one more verse about the artifacts she’d gathered while touring around the world.
Jessie Mae died in 2006, at age 82, and, as happens when every great folk artist dies, we lost many songs and stories, and the wisdom of her experience. But you can still get a whiff of all that––if you listen to Feelin’ Good.
Intermediate
Intermediate
How David Gilmour masterully employs target notes to make his solos sing.
When I was an undergraduate jazz performance major struggling to get a handle on bebop improvisation, I remember my professor Dave LaLama admonishing me, “If you think playing over the fast tunes is hard, wait until you try playing over the ballads. What Dr. Lalama was trying to impart was that playing fast scales over fast changes could get you by, but playing melodically over slow tempos, when your note choices are much more exposed, would really test how well you could create meaningful phrases.
Although getting past the “this scale works over these chords” approach to improvisation generally requires hours of shedding, aiming for particular target notes (specific notes over specific chords) is an optimum strategy to maximize your practice time. In the realm of rock guitar, I can think of no greater master of the melodic target note technique while playing ballads than David Gilmour.
For the unfamiliar few, Gilmour was first enlisted by fledgling psychedelic rockers Pink Floyd in 1967, when original guitarist/vocalist Syd Barrett began having drug-induced struggles with mental health. The band experimented with various artistic approaches for several years before refining them into a cohesive “art rock” sound by the early ’70s. The result was an unbroken streak of classic, genre-defining conceptual albums that included Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Although bassist/vocalist Roger Waters assumed the role of de facto bandleader and primary songwriter, Gilmour was a significant contributor who was praised for his soulful singing and expertly phrased lead playing that seemed to magically rework pedestrian blues phrases into sublimely evocative melodies. His focus on musicality over excessive displays of technique made him a musician’s musician of sorts and earned him a stellar reputation in guitar circles. When Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in the mid ’80s, Gilmour surprised many by calmly assuming the leadership mantle, leading the band through another decade of chart-topping albums and stadium tours. Although Pink Floyd are not officially broken up (keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright died in 2008 while Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason joined forces with Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk on the one-off single “Hey Hey Rise Up” in 2022), Gilmour has mostly spent the last few decades concentrating on his solo career. His latest release, Luck and Strange, features his wife, novelist Polly Sampson, as primary lyricist and daughter Romany Gilmour as vocalist on several tracks. His recent tour filled arenas around the world.
Let’s take a page from Gilmour’s hallowed playbook and see how incorporating a few well-chosen target notes can give our playing more melody and structure.
For the sake of simplicity, all the examples use the Gm/Bb major pentatonic scale forms. In my experience as a teacher, I find that most students can get a pretty solid handle on the root-position, Form-I minor pentatonic scale but struggle to incorporate the other four shapes while playing lead. One suggestion I give them is to work on playing the scales from the top notes down and focus on the four highest strings only. I believe this is a more logical and useful approach to incorporating these forms into your vocabulary. Try playing through Ex. 1, Ex. 2, Ex. 3, and Ex. 4, which are based on the top-down approach of the Form I, Form II, Form IV, and Form I (up an octave) shapes respectively.
Ex. 1
Ex. 2
Ex. 3
Ex. 4
Once you’ve gotten a handle on the scales, try playing Ex. 5, which is loosely based on the extended introduction to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” We begin by soloing over a static Gm chord for four measures. As target notes, I’ve chosen the root and 5th of the G minor chord ( the notes G and D, respectively). In the first measure, we’re starting in a minor pentatonic Form I with a bend up to the root of the Gm chord. A flurry of notes on beat 4 sets us up for the bend to the D in the second measure. The D note is again targeted in measure three—this time up an octave via a shift into the minor pentatonic Form II shape. Measure four aims for the G tonic up an octave, but ends with a bend that targets a C—the root of the IVm (Cm) chord in the final measure. By focusing on target notes and connecting them with embellishing licks, your lead lines will have a much better sense of direction and melodic narrative. Also, by only targeting the root and 5th of the chord, the target note approach will be easily transferrable to songs in a G blues context (G pentatonic minor over a G major or G dominant tonality).
Ex. 5
A further exploration of this approach, Ex. 6 begins with a two-beat pickup that resolves to the scale tonic G. This time however, the G isn’t serving as the root of the Im chord. Instead, it’s the 5th of Cm—the IVm chord. Employing the root of the pentatonic scale as the fifth of the IVm chord is a textbook Gilmour-ism and you can hear him use it to good effect on the extended intro to “Echoes” from Live in Gdansk. When approaching the C on beat 2 of the second full measure, bend up from the Bb on the 6th fret of the 1st string then slide up to the C on the 8th fret without releasing the bend or picking again. In the final measure, I’ve introduced two Db notes, which serve as the b5 “blue note” of the scale and provide melodically compelling passing tones on the way to the G target note on beat 4.
Ex. 6
Exclusively positioned in the Form-IV G minor pentatonic shape, Ex. 7 is based on a bluesy lick over the I chord in the first and third measures that alternately targets a resolution to the root of the IV chord (C ) and the root of the V chord (D7#9) in the second and fourth measures. Being able to resolve your lead phrases to the roots of the I, IV, and V chords on the fly is an essential skill ace improvisers like Gilmour have mastered.
Ex. 7
Now let’s turn our attention to the Bb major pentatonic scale, which is the relative major of G minor. Play through the Form I and Form II shapes detailed in Ex. 8 and Ex. 9 below. You’ll see I’ve added an Eb to the scale (technically making them hexatonic scales). This allows us a bit more melodic freedom and—most importantly—gives us the root note of the IV chord.
Ex. 8
Ex. 9
Channeling the melodic mojo of Gilmour’s lead jaunts on Pink Floyd’s “Mother” and “Comfortably Numb,” Ex. 10 targets chord tones from the I, IV, and V (Bb, Eb, and F) chords.
The muted-string rake in first measure helps “sting” the F note, which is the 5th of the Bb. Measure two targets a G note which is the 3rd of the Eb. This same chord/target note pairing is repeated in the third and fourth measures, although the G is now down an octave. For the F and Eb chords of measures five and six, I’ve mirrored a favorite Gilmour go-to: bending up to the 3rd of a chord then releasing and resolving to the root (an A resolving to an F for the F chord and a G resolving to an Eb for the Eb chord.) The final measure follows a melodic run down the Bb scale that ultimately resolves on the tonic. Be sure to pay attention to the intonation of all your bends, especially the half-step bend on the first beat of measure seven.
As a takeaway from this lesson, let’s strive to “Be Like Dave” and pay closer attention to target notes when soloing. Identify the roots of all the chords you’re playing over in your scales and aim for them as the beginning and/or ending notes of your phrases. Think of these target notes as support beams that will provide structure to your lead lines and ultimately make them more melodically compelling.