Hokay so here’s the deal. I’ve been going to guitar lessons for a few months and now on the last lesson we studied blues. After some basic stuff the teacher played some E blues progression and told me to try to improvise some solo on it. I’ve done this stuff before, about a year ago and I’ve never felt like this. It was just like I had lost all my creativity. Of course I was somewhat nervous, first it went okay but then my mind became blank.
Now I have to (actually get to) create 4 blues licks of my own for the next lesson. I actually managed to get done 2 short and bad licks but where, oh where could I get some inspiration for improvisation? I know it sounds weird… It’s weird for me too.

The soloing will be done on the blues scale, starting from fret 5 of low E (A note).

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Oh and also; where could I get a backing track of basic E and/or A blues progression? What I was teached was this:

A|–2–2–4–2–2–2–4–2–
E|–0–0–0–0–0–0–0–0– …
and so on, switching strings and stuff. So basicly just power chords with every third of four groups being 2 frets higher on the higher string.

Oh my, here’s a third question already. I hope this is allowed, but I have to ask this. My teacher told me something… Like when the rhythm player starts playing the E progression from the E power chord, I can use the E notes scattered on the blues scale to rest on them. I’m not exactly sure what to ask about this, but could someone enlighten me about this? How should I use the notes corresponding to the rhythm’s chord played?

Please forgive me if I use wrong terminology.

Your thinking too hard about it and it is stifling your creativity. Yes, you need to learn scales and such, but for the time being, it will limit you before it helps you again. When you have learned them, REALLY LEARNED them – forget them, and play the notes you want to hear.

In the mean time, go to youtube and listen to the old masters play – feel riffs from them, pick up simple ones. Maybe start with BB King and John Lee Hooker.

As for rhythm tracks, if your teacher is encouraging power chords with blues, then he is not a blues player … he is a rock player that thinks he knows a little about blues.

as for ‘resting on an e’ – what he is trying to tell you is that chords are made up of specific notes (chord tones) – when you are soloing, especially at first, it is good to complete a phrase on a chord tone to help resolve tension. With an E chord, the note E is one of the chord tones, so it is usually pretty ‘safe’ to rest there (if you like safety).