I'm not sure if it's Monroe style or not, but I use chords to help create solos whenever I don't know the melody well enough (and even sometimes when I do). Personally I look at scales and arpeggios / chords as guidelines when it comes to soloing. Mainly that's because each of those devices will involve "right" notes - notes that are in the key (scales) or in the chord being played (arpeggios). Playing these notes in a solo almost always will sound good. Chord tones generally won't produce tension, but scale tones can (like the 2nd or 7th).
I do a lot of practicing with arpeggios to help better understand songs I'm learning and generally get a better mental map of the fret board. Exercises like Tim O'Brien's arpeggio exercise (
https://www.mandozine.com/techniques...os-obrien.html) are great for that. After getting the basics with that exercise, put it in practice by taking a song you're learning and writing out a similar exercise for all those chords. If you're playing Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms for example in G, you'd play
G arpeggio for 6 measures
D arpeggio for 2 measure
G arpeggio for 2 measures
C arpeggio for 2 measures
D arpeggio for 2 measures
G arpeggio for 2 measures
Writing out fretboard maps of the chords before doing this will be a huge help.
That said, the "wrong" notes is where the magic happens. The notes that are not necessarily in the key or chord are the one's that will build tension and be more memorable in many cases than the "right" notes. It's similar to life - if you told me you went to work and nothing interested happened, it's not exciting and I'm not interested. If you told me you went to work and found a million dollars, something I didn't expect, then it's interesting and I'll pay more attention etc. Once you've gotten the "right" notes down, start adding in the "wrong" ones from time to time. You may be surprised
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