I thought up a general theme that could be used for about three Fret War rounds. The idea is to have a set of chords given in the round, but you have to do different things with them or to them.

First, I chose just these simple chords:

|:G :D :Em :D :G7 :C C#:D Em:D :|

This is all in the Key of G. In this post I describe the first one, just a simple Blues or Country solo over the chord changes.

Solo Over Changes
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In this first challenge you take the above chords and try to solo over the changes, not just stay in one key. In Blues you would just have your normal 12 bars in one key and you’d solo over that with a minor blues progression, sometimes going into a major blues progression but for no particular reason other than sound.

In country, it’s more like “simple jazz”. You primarily use the exact same major or minor blues scale (including with the chromatic minor 3rd), but you try to change keys. What’s this mean? Well I’m not particular good at it yet, but here’s a simple explanation.

First, in the above chords there definite key changes that match the chords, usually the major chords. When a G is played, you’re in the key of G. When D is played, that’s in key of D. For Em though you can be in either G or D, but in the above you probably want G. During the C:C#:D you could play a C sliding to D riff to follow that chromatic line.

Now how you play over those changes is you play the G major pentatonic when the G, G7, Em, or C chords play. You play D major pentatonic when the D chord and the D:Em:D at the end plays. That’s it, just two keys to try switching between.

Finally, if you get stuck you can do a riff that forces a particular sound against a chord.

In the example I kept it very simple, just doing a few scale patterns over the different key changes so you can hear. In general though, you would use the above chords and then work out how you’d switch between G and D based on the key changes.