Learn the blues scale. The six-note blues scale is a minor pentatonic scale with a flatted 5th as an added note. Combine these blues notes with string bends played over a 12-bar blues progression. There are a couple of variations of this progression. A good country music example is the shuffle, which features four bars of the root chord, two bars of the IV chord, two more bars of the root chord, two bars of the V chord and two bars of the root chord. In the key of C, the progression will look like this: C-C-C-C-F-F-C-C-G-G-C-C.
Play the 12-bar blues shuffle in Step 1 several times and record it. Play the shuffle with a loose right-hand rhythm, combining up and down strums. Try playing C7 on the two bars after the F chord. You can use this pattern as a background while you practice playing solos, incorporating some of the techniques used in country music. This will help train your ear to hear how country guitar sounds against a blues shuffle.
Try playing a few lead lines to practice guitar techniques used in country music. Play a couple of licks over the progression you recorded. A lick is a short series of notes played on a guitar that make up a musical phrase you create. Use the notes from the C blues scale: C, E flat, F, F sharp, G and B flat. Any of these notes will work.
Play combinations of these notes over your recorded progression to practice bending the strings. Country guitar solos often use string bending. To bend a string, play a note on your guitar, then push the string up toward the thickest string on your guitar. This raises the note in pitch. Experiment with bending until you can play several notes from the blues scale over your chord progression, bending random notes as you play.
Practice adding slide to your solos. Country guitar players often use a metal tube placed over the middle finger of the fret hand. As you play the strings on your guitar, rest the slide against the strings and move it up and down the neck to get a sound almost like a steel guitar, which is popular in country and western music. A lot of electric guitar parts written for country music incorporate slide guitar to create musical fills between vocal lines.
Play a lot of first position chords, which are popular in country music, for rhythm parts. Combine strums and finger-picking within these first position chords to add variety. First position chords are made on the first five or six frets of the guitar and include basic country chords such as C, A minor, D, E, A and F, as well as chord variations built upon these. Keep your rhythms simple and tasteful, built around the melody to give it support.
Add double stops to your solos. They can also be rhythm fills. A double stop is any two notes played together, typically incorporating a string bend. As you play a solo, augment it with both double stops and fast picking, which is often done while forming chords. This allows you to play fast country licks and alternate between rhythm playing and the quick musical fills associated with the electric guitar in country songs.