Originally Posted by: Dave Celentano

The 'blues note' (b5) is very useful all over the entire 12-bar blues progression and functions as an 'outside' note (not in any of the chords) and creates a little bit of tension.[/quote][p]I want to highlight this quote because Dave is exactly right. I do this exactly, use the flat 5th in a lick over all the I-IV-V changes in a blues in this tutorial.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=723

The point in this tutorial is just to give beginners to blues licks an opportunity to practice that one lick over & again with varied articulations & dynamics. But it's a valid approach to blues soloing.

I expand the idea by changing just the final note of the lick to target root notes in later tutorials of that series.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=2337

And in the next series of lesson I move the entire lick around to follow the chord changes.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=2345

The point here is that you can do any and all of these! Some blues players follow the changes very closely. Some players just plow right through the changes without changing their licks at all to account for the changes. And of course some players are on a continuum in between those extremes.

[quote=Dave Celentano]The trick is not to stay on the b5, but rather move through it on to other more favorable scale notes.

This is also a great observation. This is exactly how lots of blues & especially jazz guys guys operate by playing all kinds of "outside notes". In fact this idea has been around for centuries in Baroque & classical music. You add tension by dramatically delaying the arrival of a chord tone or scale degree by playing a note (or notes) a half-step below or above the target note. You can do this for one note for a whole line!

And while which notes you use are of course important, it's just as important to consider the rhythmic phrasing: how quickly you play or when you land on which notes.

The only way to know how much or little you want to follow the changes or use outside notes is a lot of playing & listening. And a lesson with Dave will help too. :)