Ok Tim, ready for some blather from some one else just learning about this? Well, anyway, here it is.
One way to find notes that work is to form the barre chord and see what notes are in the chord. Say G Major, form it, and determine what notes are there. remember the barre finger, and of course the three individually fretted notes if you are using an E shaped G major. Once you have those notes, you have chord tones that have to sound good when that chord is being played. You can find an A shapegd G major chord at the 10th and 12th frets (make a barre that is like the nut for an open A at 10, then your third finger barres the A shape two frets up at 12) and find another set of chord tones to play with on a different spot on the neck. Then you can play with scale shapes in that area and use your ear to hear what sounds good. Using what Arabian says about the relative minor pentatonic gives you some good notes. Or, for a different sound, you can map out the mixolydian or the major scale or whatever. In a A, D, E blues, A and D chord tones can be in the same position at 5, but E chord tones are moved over with an A shaped E. That gives you some other notes to use, to slide up to, etc.
This is all my student understanding and if I have it wrong, please one of you guys tell me. I blather on a bit about my experiments and learning in this topic over here: http://www.thefret.net/showthread.php?t=6848 at some length in our Study Group thread. Please hop in there to discuss as well!
One last thing, it is nice to learn the chord tones and scales as reference points, but everyone keeps telling me to use my ears. I am trying to not get too caught up in my head thinking about all this all the time and use my ears as well. I guess I try to use it to form an idea or two and try to flow with my ear a bit from there.
Steve Thompson
Sun Valley, Idaho
Guitars: Fender 60th Anniversary Std. Strat, Squier CVC Tele Hagstrom Viking Semi-hollow, Joshua beach guitar, Martin SPD-16TR Dreadnought
Amphs: Peavey Classic 30, '61 Fender Concert
Effects and such: Boss: DS-1, CE-5, NS-2 and RC20XL looper, Digitech Bad Monkey, Korg AX1G Multi-effects, Berhinger: TU100 tuner, PB100 Clean Boost, Line 6 Toneport UX2, Electro Harmonix Little Big Muff Pi, DuhVoodooMan's Rabid Rodent Rat Clone, Zonkin Yellow Screamer Mk. II, MXR Carbon Copy Delay
love is the answer, at least for most of the questions in my heart. . .
- j. johnson