Cliché No1
Theory stifles creativity!

Cliché No2
Hendrix and the great blues players didn’t need theory!

Cliché No3
Who wants to stick to rules, theory is for geeks

To be honest, I think statements like these are the most ridiculous and uneducated responses to this debate I have ever heard. The argument is a pointless one from both sides because the real answer has nothing to do with the need to be strictly educated or non educated in theory. The real question is do you need to know theory and if so how much do you need to know. All of this depends purely on your chosen style of music and your goals as a musician. Generally speaking you could probably assume the following.

• Play camp fire style guitar – No theory required
• 12 bar blues guitarist – You could go quite far without theory
• Advanced blues guitarist – It starts getting harder without but still possible
• Rock guitarist – Yes and no, depends how far you want to go
• Advanced rock improviser – Very few will get by without good theory knowledge
• Jazz guitarist – Few will get by without good theory knowledge
• Classical composer – Theory is an absolute must

The above list I would argue is fairly accurate, but as I said, generally speaking. There will always be musicians in either camp that will argue with it but the fact is, you can only generalise because even though it will be true for the majority of guitarists, it has been proven many times there will always be somebody that comes along and shows that great musicianship can be achieved for every genre at every level with no music theory knowledge. The important thing to remember here is that these kind of people are in the minority and as the music becomes more challenging the prodigies become less common.

When it comes to the less demanding styles the amount of theory required is actually not that much and is surprisingly easy to learn. Basic knowledge can go a very long way and even if you firmly believe you can get by without it you would be forcing yourself to miss out on a huge amount of learning resources because if you don’t fully understand something then you are unlikely to find ways to apply it. Playing with ideas is one of the best ways to increase your own ability to create fresh ideas. At it’s simplest level theory is a means of musical communication if nothing else.

Never forget that no two people are the same. Just because one person might be able to get to a great level without theory knowledge doesn’t necessarily mean you can do the same. The most important thing to understand about theory is the music came first, it is nothing more than an explanation of what musicians have done over the course of many years. Is it wise to ignore all this information and then go figuring it out all over again on your own. Refusing to learn basic theory is doing just that because you can avoid it all you like but even with no knowledge of it at all you will still end up “sticking to the rules” whether you realise it or not.

To stay in one key means that any chords used must contain notes from the same Major scale. Again using C Major as the example and staying with the rule that chords are built on third scale degrees, let’s see what happens if we do the same thing but start from the second scale degree instead of the first..

C D E F G A B
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

We now have the notes D, F and A.
D is the starting note here so if we compare that to a D major scale we can figure out from using the previous formulas that this is a D minor chord i.e..

D major scale contains the notes D, E, F#, G. A, B, C#.
Using the formula 1-3-5 we can see that a D Major chord consists of D – F# – A
Therefore D-F-A would translate the same as a 1-b3-5 making it a D minor.

Using this idea we can do the same thing again but starting on the third scale degree to find an E type chord, the 4th scale degree to get an F type chord and so on.

What we end up with is all these chords that belong to the key of C Major..

• C Major
• D minor
• E minor
• F Major
• G Major
• A minor
• B diminished

Examples

C Major
C E G = 1-3-5 taken from the C Major scale notes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C

D minor
D F A = 1-b3-5 taken from the D Major scale notes D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#

E minor
E G B = 1-b3-5 taken from the E Major scale notes E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#

F Major
F A C = 1-3-5 taken from the F Major scale notes F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E

G Major
G B D = 1-3-5 taken from the G Major scale notes G-A-B-C-D-E-F#

A minor
A C E = 1-b3-5 taken from the A Major scale notes A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#

B diminished
B D F = 1-b3-b5 taken from the B Major scale notes B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A#

Diminished chords we have not spoke about and I’m not going to give any details other than the formulas that make the chords. There are actually three types of diminished chords..

• Diminished = 1-b3-b5
• Half diminished (also called minor7 flat 5) = 1-b3-b5-b7
• Full diminished or diminished seventh = 1-b3-b5-bb7

Yes you read that correctly, diminished seventh chord has a double flat 7. This actually makes it become the same note as the 6th in the scale however for theoretical reasons it’s true term would be a flat flat 7.

We can also extend these chords to go beyond Triads, I’ll use the G chord as an example but the same idea applies to all the others.

G7
G B D F= 1-3-5-b7 taken from the G Major scale notes G-A-B-C-D-E-F#

G9
G B D F A = 1-3-5-b7-9 taken from the G Major scale notes G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G-A

Chord construction and chords relating to a key are important things to understand but the good news is it’s all fairly easy to remember.
For the formula of the most common chords it doesn’t take long to realise that..

• Major Triads, Maj7, Maj9 chords etc.. consist of scale notes stacked in third scale degrees
• Dominant chords consist of Major chord notes but with a flat 7
• Minor chords consist of Major chord notes but with a flat 3 and flat 7

Note: minor chords larger than 3 note triads are usually of the dominant type because they have a flat 7. There is also such a thing as a minMaj7 chord which will have a flat 3 but the 7 isn’t flat. i.e.. CminMaj7.. 1-b3-5-7 (C – Eb – G – B)

The Chord Numbering System

Just as we used numbers to relate note position in the Major scale we also do the same thing with chords that relate to each position of a Major scale, the only difference is when we write it down we use Roman Numerals instead of decimal numbers.

As in the previous section, starting from the first note of a Major scale the first chord will be Major, the second chord will be minor and so on. There are seven notes in the Major scale and so we obviously have seven chords associated with each note. Each of these chords can be of the Triad or extended type. The full sequence of chords is easy to remember..

Triads
Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, diminished.

Extended Chords
Maj7, Min7, Min7, Maj7, Dom7, Min7, Min7b5

The chart below shows how they are related to their corresponding scale position and the equivalent Roman Numerals

Note: It’s common practice to always use lower case numerals for minor chords and upper case for major.

You have probably heard terms like, “two five one in C” or “one four five in G” etc.. These numbers refer to the chords relation to the scale position.In the key of C, the chords are…

• I – C Major
• ii – D minor
• iii – E minor
• IV – F Major
• V – G Major
• vi – A minor
• vii – B diminished

A I-IV-V (one four five) in C therefore consists of the chords …

• C Major (I)
• F Major (IV)
• G Major (V)

These chords can be extended to CMaj7 – FMaj7 – G7

Here are some more examples..

• ii-V-I in C…….. Dmin7 – G7 – CMaj7.
• I-vi-IV-V in G…. GMaj – Emin – CMaj – DMaj
• I-IV-V in A…….. AMaj – DMaj – EMaj

Relative minor

The 6th chord in any Major scale sequence is called the relative minor. This would be Am in the key of C, Em in the key of G, F#m in the key of A and so on. We won’t discuss this further here other than to mention that the Key chord and the Relative minor chord share two of the same notes and have a reasonably similar sound, i.e.. C (C-E-G) Am (A-C-E).

Also the notes in the scale of C Major are the same notes found in the Natural minor scale starting on the 6th note. i.e..

• C Major scale C-D-E-F-G-A-B
• A Natural minor scale A-B-C-D-E-F-G

You hear a lot about the relative major and minor. Personally I would recommend not thinking too much about it. It’s common for guitarists to use this major/minor relationship as a handy short cut, for instance, move a minor scale pattern down by three frets and it becomes a major scale for the same key and vice versa.

While this is a handy trick it unfortunately does nothing to help you advance as a guitarist, in fact it does the exact opposite. My advice is to just know that every major scale has a relative minor and vice versa that share exactly the same notes, try to memorise these relative notes for every key and leave it at that unless you decide to get into more advanced music theory.

That pretty much covers the crash course on music theory, as mentioned already there is a lot left out of this but we have covered the important basics, the main stuff that there’s just no point not knowing!.

My definition of basic theory.
The fundamental stuff that there’s just no point in not knowing. I would consider this to be the following

• Knowing the major scale
• How other scales relate to the major scale
• How chords are built from the major scale
• Why / how chords belong to a key
• Relating all the above to the fret board

Theory certainly goes a lot deeper than this but knowing just these basics can go a long long way to helping you as a musician. Even if you really believe theory is a waste of time, not knowing these basics means you are missing out on the tons of information available in magazines and scattered across the internet simply because you won’t fully understand what they are talking about.

The bottom line is music is the result of a collection of ideas and inspiration that you gather by experience and listening. The more you know the more ideas you generate. Creativity is an extension of thought, the more you understand.. the more you have to think about and get creative with.

Many people believe that theory stifles creativity because it restricts the thought process to abide by a set of rules. These statements unfortunately are a result of a lack of understanding so I will say this out loud…

THEORY IS NOT A SET OF RULES, IT IS AN UNDERSTANDING OF MUSIC AND IS THE PERFECT MEDIUM FOR COMMUNICATING MUSICAL IDEAS BETWEEN MUSICIANS!

I’ll spare you my twenty page rant and just say this…

Asking somebody to teach you the guitar but refusing to learn basic theory is analogous to asking a driving instructor to teach you how to drive a car using roller skates..

We have twelve possible notes in western music and together they form the chromatic scale..

C – C# – D – D# – E – F – F# – G – G# – A – A# – B

The sharp (#) notes are called enharmonic notes because they can each have one of two names. They can be a sharp of the preceding note or flat (b) of the proceeding note i.e.. C# is the same note as Db and so on. The reason behind this is mostly to do with music notation but it’s not very important for basic theory and the rock or blues guitarist unless of course you want to get heavily into theory. The most important thing to know about when and where to use a sharp or flat is to follow a simple rule. All scales must contain only one of each letter name. For example the notes in the A major scale are…

A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G# … Not … A – B – Db – D – E – Gb – G#

There are exceptions to this rule but it’s beyond what’s going to be discussed here.

• The distance between each note (or fret) are intervals of Semitones, also called Half Tone or Half Step.
• The distance between any two notes (or two frets) is a Tone, Full Step or Whole Step.
• A Major scale is defined by it’s interval pattern which is …
• Tone – Tone – Semitone – Tone – Tone – Tone – Semitone
• Abbreviated to T – T – S – T – T – T – S

By using this formula we can work out the notes for any Major scale, therefore to find the notes in the C Major we just start at C (the starting note is the named Root note) and use the formula TTSTTTS..

The notes in a C Major Scale are C D E F G A B C

We can do the same thing for any other scale starting the sequence at any other note. For a G Major scale we simply start from G..

The notes in a G major scale are therefore G A B C D E F# G

We can carry on using this same formula to find the notes for any Major scale and we can also use the same formula to find Major scale notes on the fretboard, remembering that each fret’s distance is one semitone.

This is how we could play the C major scale on one string…

Rather than play these notes all on one string we can move some of the notes to different strings to create easily memorable and moveable patterns like this..

Once we get to the next C we can carry on the pattern again to go into the next octave like this.

Scale Numbering

The seven notes of the Major scale are numbered from 1 to 7 starting from the Root note. In the C major scale the root is C, in the G Major scale the root is G and so on. The root is the “main” or starting note of any scale, chord, key etc..

For example..

This is a very important thing to remember as we use the numbering system very often. Terms like “flat third”, “Major sixth”, “raised fourth” etc.. all relate to a notes position in the Major scale.

Chord construction

Standard Major and minor chords like the open and barred C, G, Amin, D, E etc are called Triads (A triad is a three note chord).

These common chords all contain only three notes but on a guitar it is common to repeat some of the notes through the octave to make use more than three strings for a fuller sound. The picture below shows this clearly with the chord C Major in open, 5 string and 6 string bar shapes. The three notes in the C Major chord are C, E and G.

And here is the same thing in numerical (interval) form relating to the C major scale

Major chords are simply made by using the formula 1-3-5. In other words a C Major chord consists of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the C Major scale (C – E – G). The same formula used for G Major chord would show us that it consists of the notes G – B – D which are the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the G Major scale (G, A, B, C, D, E, F#).

As mentioned earlier the distance between each note in the chromatic scale is a half step and between any two notes is a whole step. There is a name for every interval between all twelve notes and the most important ones are the third and the fifth.

Two whole steps above the root note= Major third

Three whole steps and one half step above the root note = Fifth

Minor Thirds

To Sharpen or Flatten ( raise or lower ) any note means simply to move it up or down by one semitone (half step). If we do this very thing and flatten the Major third note it’s interval now becomes a minor third (also referred to as a flat third).

One whole step and one half step above the root note = minor third

The C Major chord as shown above is made of a 1st (root) 3rd (Major third) and a fifth (C – E – G). If we now lower the third degree of the scale we end up with a 1st, flat 3rd and 5th. By replacing the Major third interval with a minor third interval we create the minor chord (Triad) which will be C – Eb – G.

The formula to make a minor chord is 1 – b3 – 5.

If we move our five string C Major barre chord down by three frets you should recognise it as an open A chord.

And now we flatten the third and you should recognise it as an A minor chord

If you have not realised it before then now’s a good time to note that 5 and 6 string bar chords are called moveable chords because they are the same thing as the open A and open E chords moved along to different positions of the fretboard. Whatever note the root falls on will be the name of the new chord position.

For example the open position A minor chord above can be moved up three frets so that the ’1′ (or root) lands back on the C therefore making it a C minor. Take a look at the 6 string bar shape C chord which is on the 8th fret, move it down 8 frets and you will see it is the open E chord.

The same thing goes for scales, the major scale pattern we looked at earlier can be moved anywhere along the neck and whatever note the root falls on is the name of the new major scale position. This is the one thing that makes learning the guitar easier than most other instruments but it can also be it’s downfall because it’s easy to fall into the trap of just relying on scale patterns.

Once you start to recognise scales and chords as notes and numbers you will find your options increase a hell of a lot and you will start to think differently about the way you play guitar. This is when it all starts to get more interesting.

Extended Chords

So far we’ve learnt that chords are created by harmonising notes from a Major scale in third degrees (not to be confused with third intervals) in other words, just every other note in the scale.

Starting from C and moving along in third scale degrees we end up with the notes C-E-G for the C Major Triad.

We can actually carry on adding third degrees to make extended chords which contain more than 3 notes. The next chord up is a Major 7th and consists of the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th of the Major scale so a CMaj7 will contain the notes C-E-G-B

We can now carry on past the octave to create even larger chords.

An important thing to note here is that these chords…

• C Major 7
• C Major 9
• C Major 11
• C Major 13

And these…

• C7
• C9
• C11
• C13

are not the same chords.

C7, C9, C11 and C13 are all dominant chords and the others are all major chords

Dominant chords

The dominant seventh chord contains the same notes as the major seventh chord except for the seventh scale degree which is flattened.
The formula for the Dominant seventh chord is 1-3-5-b7
Therefore a Cmaj7 chord would contain the notes C-E-G-B while a C dominant seventh chord (C7) would contain the notes C-E-G-Bb.

Note that a C7 isn’t actually in the key of C Major because it contains a B flat which isn’t in the key of C major, the Cmaj7 however is in the key of C major.

Having an understanding of all this is certainly helpful but what’s more useful right now is to just learn the formulas for the various chord types. These are surprisingly easy to remember and once you know them you will pretty much be able to figure out the notes in any chord just by relating them to their respective Major scale.

The formulas work the same for whatever scale you take them from but I’ll do all the examples in the key of C.

Scale Formulas

Major Chord (Triad)

• 1 – 3- 5 (C – E – G)

Minor chord (Triad)

• 1 – b3 – 5 (C – Eb – G)

Extended Major Chords
Example.. Cmaj7, CM7, CM9 etc.

• Major 7 …….. 1-3-5-7 (C-E-G-B)
• Major 9 …….. 1-3-5-7-9 (C-E-G-B-D)
• Major 11 ……. 1-3-5-7-9-11 (C-E-G-B-D-F)
• Major 13 ……. 1-3-5-7-9-11-13 (C-E-G-B-D-F)

Dominant chords
Example.. C7, C9, C11

• Seven ….. 1-3-5-b7 (C-E-G-Bb)
• Nine …….. 1-3-5-b7-9 (C-E-G-Bb-D)
• Eleven ….. 1-3-5-b7-9-11 (C-E-G-Bb-D-F)
• Thirteen … 1-3-5-b7-9-11-13 (C-E-G-Bb-D-F)

Extended minor chords
Example.. Cm7, Cmin7, Cmin13 etc.

• Minor 7 …. 1-b3-5-b7 (C-Eb-G-Bb)
• Minor 9 …. 1-b3-5-b7-9 (C-Eb-G-Bb-D)
• Minor 11 … 1-b3-5-b7-9-11 (C-Eb-G-Bb-D-F)
• Minor 13 … 1-b3-5-b7-9-11-13 (C-Eb-G-Bb-D- F)

note: extended minor chords consist of a flat 3rd and flat 7th

This is by no means a complete list of all the possible chord variations but outlines the most common.

Music Theory For Guitar Part 2

Before you think “yeah..boring”.. I am not talking about moving the pentatonic scale up or down three frets, in fact I’ll go as far as saying I’m against teaching this method of relating the two scales. It’s a handy trick but if you don’t fully understand it then using this method will result in all your licks and scales sounding minor when they should be sounding major.

A major scale is a major scale and should sound like one. Likewise the minor scale should sound like a minor scale. If you have spent most of your time practicing with the standard minor pentatonic shapes then it’s a safe bet to assume that if you want to go from A minor to A major pentatonic by shifting down three frets then you will sound like you are playing F# minor and not A major. Let’s take a deeper look at it and see how these scales are constructed from the major scale.

The notes in any major scale are numbered from one to seven starting from the root note. So for example here are the notes and their related scale numbers using the C and A major scales.

The major pentatonic contains all the notes from the major scale apart from the 4th and 7th and the minor pentatonic uses all the notes except for the 2nd and 6th, however the minor pentatonic also flattens the 3rd and 7th notes. This gives us two scale spellings to work with.

Major pentatonic = 1, 2, 3, 5, 6

Minor pentatonic = 1, b3, 4, 5, b7

Side note: The natural minor scale is also viewed in relation to the major scale and uses all seven notes of it but flattens the 3rd, 6th and 7th scale degrees. Therefore the minor pentatonic can also be viewed as being the same as the natural minor scale with the 2nd and 6th scale degrees omitted.

Using these formulas we can easily work out which notes are contained in the major and minor pentatonic scales. Using C and A as examples we can work out the following.

Notice how the C major pentatonic and A minor pentatonic share the same notes but just have different starting points. Therefore any major pentatonic scale will contain the same notes as those found in it’s relative minor counterpart and vice versa, for example ‘A’ is the relative minor of C major so A minor pentatonic will have the same notes as C major pentatonic and F# is the relative minor of A major therefore F# minor pentatonic scale will contain the same notes as A major pentatonic and so on.

It is for this reason that simply using the same scale shape three frets up or down can change a minor pentatonic scale into a major pentatonic scale.

C minor / Eb major pentatonic

By choosing a different starting note this could be a C minor or Eb Major pentatonic scale…

… move the whole shape down three frets and it becomes a C major or A minor pentatonic scale

However, it’s important not to think of these two shapes as being exactly the same scale but more of a lucky coincidence for memorising patterns, even though the same notes are used they should both sound very different in their use. This is a hard thing to grasp for beginners but it makes more sense as you gain more experience, either way, I’ll attempt to put some kind of short but logical explanation to it.

The moveable nature of scale patterns on the guitar unfortunately forces you into thinking about things that you might not have taken notice of had you learnt to play a piano instead of guitar. For example you know that A minor and C major pentatonics can be played as identical scales in the same position so how can they possibly be two different things?. The answer to this is in the way you play with the scale. If all you do with a scale (like most beginners) is run your fingers sequentially up and down the pattern then you aren’t very likely going to make an A minor pentatonic sound any different to a C major pentatonic and if you already have a bunch of minor pentatonic licks in your repertoire then there’s a good chance that you aren’t making it sound like C major at all.

Making two identical scale patterns sound different from each other takes some experience and a lot of listening before it makes some kind of sense, we encounter the same problems when trying to understand modes and even some fairly experienced guitarists struggle with this very subject so don’t worry if it takes time for any of it to sink in.

First things first, I’m sure you would agree that no matter what scale we use for a solo there is no need to play every note of that scale within every bar of the solo, you might hang on just one bent note for an entire bar (or longer) maybe use a three note lick repeated for a few beats or whatever. The point being that when you play a solo you are often just picking notes or licks out of that scale pattern to make phrases, not just running backwards and forwards through the entire scale pattern for the whole solo. The actual choice of those notes you pick out of the scale is what makes all the difference.

A better way to understand this is to think about a full seven note major scale, let’s say C major. I’m quite confident that you agree we don’t need to play all seven scale notes all of the time. Okay now pick up your guitar and play these three minor pentatonic scales.

A minor pentatonic at fifth fret

D minor pentatonic at 10th fret

E minor pentatonic at twelfth fret

I’ll guess I can remain fairly confident that you agree these three scales don’t sound identical, in fact they all sound very different from each other. Now take a look at the C major scale notes below and you’ll see that all three of those pentatonic scales (as well as their relative majors) all use notes from the C major scale.

C Major scale C, D, E, F, G, A, B

• C Major pentatonic C, D, E, G, A
• D minor pentatonic D, F, G, A, C
• E minor pentatonic E, G, A, B, D
• F Major pentatonic F, G, A, C, D
• G Major pentatonic G, A, B, D, E
• A minor pentatonic A, C, D, E, G

This shows us just one example of how we can pull different tonalities out of one scale by being careful with our choice of notes. If you were to play a few bars of a solo or a lick in C major without once playing the notes B or E you wouldn’t suddenly think you actually played an F major pentatonic scale for those few bars, yet by omitting the B and E you are left with the notes C, D, F, G, A which could all be considered as a part of a C major scale, an F major pentatonic or D minor pentatonic. It’s the way you make use of them that creates the tonal centre or the overall flavour of the sound. Making this tonal centre reflect in your playing takes experience and a good ear but knowing some theory basics can help you understand it a lot better.

Pentatonic scales are only five notes but the same idea applies so hopefully this outlines the idea of thinking about C major pentatonic and A minor pentatonic as being two separate scales, there is no problem with using the same shapes but you need to be careful how you use them. If you have spent a lot of time playing in the key of A minor using the minor pentatonic box shape then chances are a lot of your ideas and licks have a minor flavour to them especially as the minor pentatonic box shape so closely resembles the barred 6 string A minor chord.

Lets take another look at the standard A minor pentatonic box shape and have a think about the notes contained within it (A,C,D,E,G). The basic A minor chord (triad) contains the notes A, C, E and an Amin7 chord contains the notes A, C, E, G so it’s very easy to make this scale sound with a minor flavour.

Notes in the A minor pentatonic

There are a few things that strengthen a tonal centre. We know the notes A, C, E make an A minor chord so it’s fairly obvious that if you play these three notes alone then the sound you create will sound like an A minor chord. The A to C interval is what really nails home the minor sound because it is the minor third interval so if you play these two notes consecutively and often then you are already creating an A minor flavour with just these two notes.

If you are forcing the notes A, C and E to stand out and dominate while playing the A minor pentatonic scale then you will be creating an A minor tonal centre. You can make these notes stand out in a number of ways, playing them on the downbeat, accenting or adding expression to them and hanging on to them with longer duration than the other notes will all help to make them stand out more than the other notes. Starting and ending a phrase on a certain note will also try to make that note feel like a home note therefore ending your phrases on any of the chord tones should help to always sound like they are meant to be there.

The standard minor pentatonic box shape lends itself quite nicely to almost forcing you to play with a minor sound if you are not careful because it places the notes in convenient positions for your fingers to easily gravitate to the minor chord tones. If we take the A note away from the shape you will see that we end up with a shape that would make it hard for your fingers to flow across naturally but at the same time limit your options for creating an A minor sound. The index finger tends to get used as a kind of anchor and isn’t as often used for expressive notes or notes of longer duration but right under your index finger are the three C major chord tones C, E, G grouped together.

A minor pentatonic with the root note omitted and C Major chord tones under index finger position

Practicing the A minor pentatonic scale without the root helps to force you into playing with a C major tonal centre. After spending some time doing this your ear will become more accustomed to the major sound and after a while you’ll find you can put the A note back in and use it more as a passing note rather than a dominating one but try to avoid too many hammer ons and pull off’s between the A and C because this creates the A minor third interval.

Because the index finger in many players tends to produce the least dominating and expressive notes, using the major pentatonic position below will also help you to getaway from the A minor sound but again, try to avoid too much consecutive playing of the A to C on the third string if you want to it to sound more like C major than A minor.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas of ways to make two identical scales sound different by being careful with note choice. Practice these ideas often because it’s a very important step towards making your solos sound much more musical and one you should spend a lot of time experimenting with. If you are not used to playing like this then I’m sure it sounds like a lot to have to think about while you are in the middle of a solo but don’t let that worry you, the main thing is to just be aware of it and let experience take it’s course. You don’t need to be thinking like a calculator when you are playing but experiment with these ideas often enough and you will be training your ear and subconscious to eventually get used to playing like this naturally.