The Blues Guitar Scale-Master It In 1 Quick Lesson

The blues guitar scale is at the same time one of the simplest to learn and the slipperiest to master. In the wrong hands it can sound atonal and unsophisticated, but in the right hands the blues scale can make you sound like an expert and have people wondering how you learned so much about music theory-fear not though, everything you need to know about the blues scale is covered in this one simple lesson!

The blues guitar scale is very very similar to the minor pentatonic scale, with one addition-the flat 5th. The flat 5th has a very distinctive almost atonal quality-it’s very dark sounding with almost evil overtones! Hundreds of years ago, the flat 5th was known as “The Devil’s Note” and in some circles the use of it was banned altogether lest it should invoke the Devil himself!

These days people are more liberal towards the interesting sound of the flat 5th, otherwise known as the “blue” note. You can find it being applied in everything from rock and blues to jazz to heavy metal and even world music.

How to play the blues guitar scale:

¦--X--¦------¦-----¦--X--¦
¦--X--¦------¦-----¦--X--¦
¦--X--¦------¦--X--¦--O--¦
¦--X--¦------¦--X--¦-----¦
¦--X--¦--O--¦--X--¦-----¦
¦--X--¦------¦-----¦--X--¦

Above you can see a basic scale diagram for how to play the blues guitar scale. The X and O’s represent the notes that make up the scale. I have based it around the most common of the pentatonic shapes, and as you can see it really doesn’t take too much expertise to add the extra note, in this case exemplified by an “O” instead of X.

Use of the blues guitar scale:
There aren’t really too many rules as to when and where you can use the blues guitar scale. It will work great in a jazz/blues context, especially minor stuff-it will sound great if you bend up to it or slide into it-many people will use it as a passing note as part of a scale run or something and that’s fine too, but I find to bring out the true flavour you may like to target it a little more as a focal point of the melody.

So there you have a one step lesson in how to play the blues guitar scale. It can be a tremendously sophisticated sounding scale if you spend enough time with it, and it can give your previously sited pentatonic guitar playing some authentic blues flavour. Happy exploring.

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