How to use octaves in guitar solos - Techniques Inspired by Wes Montgomery - and More!
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Wes Montgomery is the octave idol for a lot of guitarists, and his approach is only the start. This lesson covers how to actually play octaves cleanly, plus the Lee Ritenour and George Benson variations and a few ways to move them around.
What you'll learn
- Play octaves Wes-style on non-adjacent strings and strum them — don't pluck
- Use a muting technique so only the two octave notes ring
- Slide into octaves for a vocal, expressive feel
- Break the octave (Lee Ritenour) or add a 6th inside it (George Benson) for variety
The Wes Montgomery octave
If you play an E on the fifth string and the E an octave up on the B string, you have to use two fingers and it comes out plucky, with two strings in between that make it hard to strum. Wes's solution was to move the upper note to the G string — so you fret the A string at the 7th fret and the G string at the 9th.
The key is the muting. Put your fourth finger on the upper octave note, let the second finger come over and mute the low string in between, and brush down with the thumb. The strings you're not playing stay muted, so you get a smooth strummed octave instead of a plucked one.
A Wes lick across the string sets
Wes loved moving octaves across string sets. Start with the octave on the A and G strings, then jump toward the floor to the next set (D string 7th fret, B string 10th), slide up three frets to a C, and move to the next set at the 9th and 12th frets. It implies an A minor sound — and sliding into the notes is part of what makes octaves sing.
Ready to take this further? Best Minor Pentatonic Course
Turn scales into solos that actually sing.
Breaking it up, and the arpeggio approach
Lee Ritenour and other funky, jazzy players break the octave up: play the two notes, go back to the first note, and slide. You can run it through a scale — an A Dorian sound, for instance.
You can also play octaves through an arpeggio. Take a C major 7 arpeggio (C, E, G, B): come into the C, move over to the E and G, slide up to the C root, and reverse. The shapes shift between three and four frets apart, but you get used to that.
Set skipping and the George Benson 6th
Set skipping means starting on one string set, moving toward the nut, grabbing the next note on an adjacent set, then jumping back — it lets you cover a lot of ground and make bold jumps through a key like A Dorian.
Finally, the George Benson hybrid: go back to the original octave shape (two strings between) and add a 6th above the lowest note, on the in-between string. In the key of G, the 6th above E is a minor 6th (E to C), so you get three notes — the octave on the outside, the 6th inside — and you move it diatonically up and down the neck. Worth a listen: Wes's album "Bumpin'."
For players ready to take this all the way, Adam lays out his complete professional system — rhythm, melody and harmony as one language — in The Method.
