7 Stages of Frustration When Learning Blues Lead Guitar - What stage are YOU at?

This blog post is meant to be a bit of fun while exploring my personal observations of the typical stages of frustration I see my students experience. These stages aren't necessarily sequential, and some lucky players skip a few entirely! Read through and let me know which stages resonate with you and where you might be right now.

Let me break down the common stages of frustration that beginner guitarists typically experience when learning blues lead guitar and improvisation:

Stage 1: The Scale Trap

Players begin by learning the pentatonic and blues scales but feel trapped playing them mechanically up and down. They know the "right notes" but their solos sound like exercises rather than music. Many get stuck here, wondering why they don't sound like their heroes despite playing the "correct" notes.

Let's face it—no matter where you are in your lead guitar journey, every single one of us has been here! If you're one of my students or have tried my free BluesBlock introductory course, you'll know that I teach through patterns—just two of them—that cover the entire fretboard. Patterns make you move around the neck and use notes in different ways than running pentatonic shapes across your fretboard. However, knowing HOW to play the notes makes all the difference, and that means learning from your heroes. My BluesBlock method provides students with an effective way to reverse-engineer solos through simple fretboard navigation, which potentially leads you to stage 2! Take a look at my free course here

Stage 2: The Lick Collector

Frustrated with scales, guitarists often move to memorizing classic blues licks. While this adds authentic vocabulary, they struggle to connect licks naturally or use them in different contexts. Solos become a choppy string of memorized phrases without flow or personal expression. Worse still, this can lead to aimless noodling that sounds boring to both you and your listeners.

Again, my BluesBlock method is designed not only to show you how to navigate the fretboard, but how everything connects musically. This way, you end up targeting notes and understanding how licks connect to underlying chords using logical numbers instead of confusing letters.

Stage 3: The Speed Demon

A common frustration outlet is focusing on playing fast. Players might master rapid-fire pentatonic runs but lack the ability to build tension, tell a story, or connect emotionally with listeners. This stage often leads to disappointment when fast playing alone doesn't create compelling solos.

Well, guess what? This site is called the Art of Slow Blues for a reason! Learning how to put emotion into each note and leave plenty of space to breathe is one of the most valuable lessons you can learn, regardless of what type of guitarist you want to become. It's always easy to speed up, but slowing down, holding a note for an entire bar and making it meaningful is priceless. This is why I teach lead guitar through slow blues—you really learn to make your solos tell a story and let people know how you feel.

Stage 4: The Theorist

Some players dive deep into music theory, learning modes, chord tones, and advanced concepts. While valuable, this can lead to "paralysis by analysis"—thinking so much about theoretical options that spontaneous expression becomes harder, not easier.

I'm totally guilty of this myself! It's my nature to understand how things work down to the smallest detail, and I dove headfirst into music theory. By the time I surfaced, I realized I had wasted so much time. In reality, you only need basic theory delivered at the right place and time to get the most out of your playing. My students know this as what I call "just-in-time theory"— just what you need, just when you need it!

Stage 5: The Time Keeper

In this stage, players realize that their notes sound "right" but don't groove or swing like the blues masters. This reveals the challenging journey of developing rhythmic feel, learning to play behind or ahead of the beat, and mastering subtle timing nuances that give blues its emotional power.

The timing struggle is real, everybody! I found this one of the most challenging parts of learning to improvise soulful, melodic solos. There's no quick fix here, I'm afraid—you have to put in the work! This means learning your favorite solos, or parts of them. While the BluesBlock method can help you understand why the notes work as mentioned above, it cannot show you HOW to play the notes.

The best way I've found to help my students at this stage is to focus on classic solos. Two solos I always encourage students to tackle are ZZ Top's "Blue Jean Blues" and BB King's "The Thrill is Gone." It's only a start, but an incredibly strong one. The timing that Billy Gibbons and BB King use in their phrasing is a masterclass.

When it comes to soloing in major keys, I ask students to tackle Gary Moore's outro solo for "I Need Your Love So Bad" and Taj Farrant's improvisation on "Tennessee Whiskey." If you're interested, I've done some free breakdowns of these epic solos on YouTube.

Stage 6: The Expressionist

Guitarists become aware that timing, fretboard navigation, and basic theory alone don't capture the expressive elements of great blues playing—string bending accuracy, vibrato control, dynamic control, and the subtle microtonal elements that give blues its vocal quality. This stage can be particularly frustrating as these skills require significant focused practice to develop, just as we saw with timing in Stage 5.

The good news is that my recommended solos provide a masterclass in phrasing as well as timing. However, it's really common for beginners to get stuck using only a couple of phrasing techniques such as sliding and bending. To keep solos sounding fresh, I created the X, Y, and Z concept of the fretboard that categorizes phrases into three simple groups that are easy to store in your mind and access when improvising.

Stage 7: The Integrator

The final major hurdle is integrating all these elements—scales, licks, theory, timing, and expression—while staying mentally free enough to actually improvise and respond in the moment. Players often cycle through feeling confident in one area while struggling in others.

The key phrase here is "staying mentally free," as improvising—literally composing music on the fly and in the moment—has many moving parts, yet ironically needs to sound and feel relaxed. My students tell me that my brain-friendly method removes much of the mental clutter that conventional methods of learning lead guitar often create. There's no denying that pulling all the pieces together is challenging, but it's easier when your brain isn't overloaded and constantly on the edge of panic mode!

The Escape Artist

Not a stage—An endpoint!

The breakthrough moment when you stop thinking about individual elements and start truly speaking through your guitar. This is the point at which you can throw on a five-minute backing track and create endlessly melodic, coherent solos. There's no shortcut, but the most direct route is by standing on the shoulders of giants—the heroes who came before you. I wrote a blog about this here!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave a comment about any of the stages you identify with.