That I need to know more shapes. I was having a jam to Tin Pan Alley because it's a slow, repetitive blues song and the live version is essentially a jam.

I realised after about a minute that I was just running circles around what I know, not really changing shape - not sure how to add a certain lick into the correct key and it annoyed me.

I got a deck of blues licks from a guitar store so i'm gonna sit down and try and get some of them down. I need to pay more attention to the Joe Bonamassa lessons i've got too because he's been teaching how to change a boring standard pentatonic into something special with feeling, adding notes, changing the order of things etc etc.

I still have trouble getting a good sounding solo off the pentatonic scale, if anyone has any lessons on the web about adding some notes, etc please let me know. :]

Add extended chord notes (9,11,13), use arpeggios, use related majors / minors, chromatic things, and ofc the best: Do something unusual.
Think outside the box

..Here is just something to think about. Mby it helps you to find new lines.. Hopefully

could not have put it better myself.
What made all those famous licks (and what made em sound so damn good), like Stevie Ray Vaughans, for example, was by doing something outside the standard.

I'm gonna sit down tonight with the blues deck i have and learn some more. I figure that regardless of where the card says I should be playing the lick, i'm gonna learn it at the 10th fret B string (alotta my blues jams are in this key, whatever it may be)

I might even post a vid of a random jam out!

....Lol you guys have no idea really do you?

In what way was that helpful? More to the point - in what way did YOU JUST HELP ME, ALMIGHTY SAVIOUR OF THY GUITAR TECHNIQUE~?!?!!

How bout you add in the 4th and 7th notes of the major scale. Then your penta scale will evolve into a septa scale!!! The trick to adding those notes to the solo section is to not use them as points of destination, but use them as bridges to your next note. In other words, no long notes on the 4th and 7th. They're passing notes. If you're playing blues tunes, add the flat 5. If you're playing the minor pentatonic, learn more about the Aeolian mode and it's scale patterns.

This is exactly my next step - but not just Aeolian mode, I need to look at Dorian mode to play Alex Skolnick material lol. Modes *sigh*

look up mike noonan on mallet percussion and listen to his soloing.

also: a very very wise (and well-known) saxophone player once told me to literally sit and play through a songs solo changes a capella for an hour straight without stopping. you will naturally break through your own "norm" just out of necessity and it works!