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Solo Guitar - The Blues Scales: The Pentatonic Scale - A Simple Way To Start
Solo Guitar - The Blues Scales: The Pentatonic Scale - A Simple Way To Start
The Blues are a simple music and Im a simple man. But the Blues arent a science, the Blues
cant be broken down like mathematics. The Blues are a mystery, and mysteries are never as
simple as they look!
- BB King, interview by David Ritz [1]
When you want to play a solo, you have to know which notes you can play. This set of notes is called
a scale. It must fit to the song and the chords, not all notes on your fretboard would give a nice
sound if played in one song. Looking into a music book youll find dozens of different scales and
modes, major and natural/melodic/harmonic minor, dorian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian or phrygian
mode and even more. If you want to learn more about these, look at the basics.
The classical music theory is not well suited to describe the Blues, but we dont have a choice.
From that point of view Blues is crazy and wrong playing dominant major 7th chords all over minor
pentatonic scales, using chromatic scale pieces for intros and turnarounds, using a 5 tone scale
instead of the accustomed 7 tone scales, adding notes that dont belong to any scale and these
stupid chord progressions so its only an attempt to describe what we call the Blues. Why is it so
weird? Its because the black people in the USA back in the beginning of the 20th century tried to
play their African music styles on western instruments i.e. the guitar, the harp and the piano. Take
the guitar: the frets are made for equal intonation, to play classical (western) music. To get the notes
between you need special techniques like a string bend or a slide. The simplest way to describe
the Blues scale with standard music theory is using a pentatonic scale and add some extra notes. But
this does in no way mean that Blues is a kind of limited music or that the black slaves back then
could be reduced to people who only know 5 notes. Its the opposite true Blues is much more than
pentatonic music. But to get started with need a description, and the classical music theory is what
most people know.
I---------------------0-3-I
I-----------------0-3-----I
I-------------0-2---------I
I---------0-2-------------I
I-----0-2-----------------I
I-0-3---------------------I
I----------------------12-14-15-------------I
I----------------12-14----------------------I
I-------12-13-14----------------------------I
I-12-15-------------------------------------I
I-----------I
I-----------I
I-----------I
Common box example for the A Blues scale
Below are schemes of your fretboard with all pentatonic fingering patterns for the two most common
Blues keys (this is NO tab, just directly a look at the fretboard). You can see the minor pentatonic
scale fingering patterns (with root notes and blue notes) plus the additional notes from the major
pentatonic scale, which you dont need in the beginning, but will give you more room to play. You
can cut out your own boxes in which you can play comfortably.
For the open strings of a scale take a look at the 12th fret. For other scales, look at the basics.
The scales
How do I use the following graphics to improve my solo guitar?
Lets say we have a standard 12 bar Blues in E with the chords E(7)/A7/B7. Use the E scale below
and locate the red root notes (E). To get the minor pentatonic scale, add the black notes (E-G--B-D). You can now play in safe mode with these notes, each note will sound more or less good,
there are no wrong notes. The next step is adding the blue note (yes, its colored blue, Bb in this
case). If you reach the point that it gets boring, carefully try to add some of the gray notes from the
major pentatonic. Some not all! Handle them with care, youll soon find out when to use which note
to get the tonal effect you want to express. If you wonder why there are less gray notes than black
notes: both scales share the same root (red) plus the V (B in this case), which is colored black to
avoid confusion.
Tip: Many more scales graphics in every key and for different tunings and other nice extra features
are at the scale and chord generator.