Hey & welcome to GT!

Originally Posted by: daniel.antunes.lourenco

I am a self-taught guitar player for a couple of decades. While I can play rock songs that are decently complex I have almost no knowledge of guitar theory and fretboard notes - deficiencies of unstructured self-learning.[/quote][p]Thanks for the background info. It sounds like you should work on filling the holes in your knowledge.

Originally Posted by: daniel.antunes.lourencoI can easily play pentatonic all over the neck but miss the intuition, phrases, and knowledge of the key notes that could actually make them useful.[/quote]

You need a little knowledge of how scales & chords work together. And then you can build a vocabulary of "things to say", or more precisely, a repertoire of licks you can play on demand.

Originally Posted by: daniel.antunes.lourencoNow the question - I am struggling to understand an effective way to use Guitar Tricks to go to develop the ability to play blues-style lead guitar. The Blues Style courses seem to be very focused on the playing technique and a small number of licks. Not much theory or exercises to glue it all together.

This is a good observation. Much of the Blues course assumes students will come from the Fundamentals & still need some basic rhythm skills along with theory & lead skills & ideas. Assuming you already have those, then you should easily be able to watch through the course, clicking through until you get to where you are skill wise. At that point it might help you to shore up some of the basic knowledge you say you might be lacking.

[quote=daniel.antunes.lourenco]What mix would you recommend? I feel a bit stuck in the Blues Course alone.

Yes, you should definitely work on other things in addition to the Blues course! Here are some specific suggestions.

Learn some basic theory here.

Music Theory: a Brief Overview

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=495

Go deeper here:

https://www.guitartricks.com/collection/music-theory

Learn the basics of improvisation here. It starts simple, but with very necessary concepts (key signature, target chord tones, build melodies) & gets interesting quickly!

https://www.guitartricks.com/collection/learning-to-improvise

Learn how & why blues licks work here. Again, starts simple but gets complex & interesting quickly.

https://www.guitartricks.com/collection/Bread-and-Butter-Butter-Blues-Licks

Or if you are beyond that, then jump right into this series on how to leverage pentatonic scales to make great blues licks.

Major Notes In Minor Pentatonic 1

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=217

Major Notes In Minor Pentatonic 2

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=232

Major Notes In Minor Pentatonic 3

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=826

Major Notes In Minor Pentatonic 4

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=244

[quote=daniel.antunes.lourenco]

Naturally learning songs is always the thing I get the most fun.

[p]Learning songs is always a great idea. After all, that's the end goal of learning all these concepts & skills: to play music! But get specific & learn the exact licks of players you enjoy. GT has lots of great blues songs with great licks.

https://www.guitartricks.com/songs/blues

Hope this helps! Please ask more if necessary. Happy Holidays & best of success with your guitar learning & playing!