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Solo Guitar - The Blues Scales

"The Blues are a simple music and I'm a simple man. But the Blues aren't a science, the Blues
can't 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 you'll 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 don't 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 don't belong to any scale - and
these stupid chord progressions... so it's only an attempt to describe what we call the Blues. Why
is it so weird? It's 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 best
way to describe the Blues scale with standard music theory is using a pentatonic scale and add
some extras.

The pentatonic scale

This scale is called "pentatonic", because it contains only 5 (penta = 5) different notes. We start
with the minor pentatonic scale in E (there's also a major pentatonic scale, which sounds not so
"sad", but for a deep basic Blues we'll take the minor). We start with the key of E, because it's a
"guitar key" - all open strings belong to this scale.

Here it is, noted in tab (E is the key, that means the scale begins with E):

E I---------------------0-3-I
B I-----------------0-3-----I
G I-------------0-2---------I
D I---------0-2-------------I
A I-----0-2-----------------I
E I-0-3---------------------I

E minor pentatonic scale, first pattern

You start with the open E-string; that's (of course) E. When you reach the 2nd fret of the D-
string, it's also E (play both at the same time, you will hear it). And finally the other open E
string is also E. So you've stepped through 2 octaves. The notes are E - G - A - B - D.

Playing the open strings also contains all notes of the E minor pentatonic scale, but not in the
correct sequence, every 2nd note is left out. That means you can play simple rhythm guitar and
even small solos with only open strings! No need to take your left hand...(sorry, lefthanders).

The Blues scale: Blue Notes

Next step: to get the typical Blues sound, we add a special note: the "Blue note" (which is
usually a diminished fifth, see basics).

However, there are more definitions of the Blue note, I use the most common definition. The
diminished third and the diminished seventh are the other ones often called "Blue notes", or in
general notes played at a lower pitch than those of the major scale.
The diminished (flat) third is the note which in classical (western) music styles determines if
it's a major or a minor scale. In Blues music it is often a bend form the minor note into the major
note, usually not reaching exactly the target note.
The diminished (flat) seventh is the note which is part of the dominant seventh chord, the one
which leads back to the tonic (root) note.
Another more simple definition you'll find is that a Blue note is always played at a lower pitch
than those of the major scale to express a certain feeling. All these definitions show us the
impossibility for an exact definition using classical music theory. The African roots of the Blues
music used non-equal tempered (natural harmonic) scales, so this is obviously an attempt to
describe these "in-between" notes using classical notation. So you can consider American Blues
music as a well grown mixture of African and European music styles.

Back to the scale - it now the scale gets more "dramatic" and looks like:

I-------------------------0-3-I
I---------------------0-3-----I
I---------------0-2-3---------I
I-----------0-2---------------I
I-----0-1-2-------------------I
I-0-3-------------------------I
E minor Blues scale

This new note is a great starting point for string bending, in Blues music a note is often bended
into a Blue note. Another note to bend into is for example a note from the major scale while
playing in a minor scale. By the way - you can play this scale also 12 frets higher using the same
fingering pattern, it's still in E:

I-------------------------------------12-15-I
I-------------------------------12-15-------I
I----------------------12-14-15-------------I
I----------------12-14----------------------I
I-------12-13-14----------------------------I
I-12-15-------------------------------------I

Other keys
And now the great advantage of playing guitar: with a bright smile on your face you look to the
keyboard player and give him the sign for changing the key. While the keyboard player is
wondering about the black and white keys on his keyboard (what was it? F-sharp? damn...), you
just have finished your solo. The secret is that you only have to move the frets up or down to
change to another key. The fingering pattern is still the same! Look at the fretboard scheme to
locate the root notes for a scale. Moving up or down a fret means moving up or down a semi
note: if you want to play in F you can use the pattern of E and simply move up one fret.

Example: Blues pentatonic in A would look like (start at the 5th fret!):

I-------------------------5-8-I
I---------------------5-8-----I
I---------------5-7-8---------I
I-----------5-7---------------I
I-----5-6-7-------------------I
I-5-8-------------------------I
A minor Blues scale

With this scales you can play your first Blues licks. The advantage is that you can play
everytime every note of the scale. There is no "wrong" note, but some will sound better, some
not so good. You can not only play pentatonic scales to Blues music, but also to rock, pop and
even jazz music. (On the other hand, you can never get any Spanish flamenco or country music
feeling with it, there are some notes or better intervals missing...)

This is not the only position for the pentatonic Blues scale. There are different fingering patterns,
so you can play it all over the fretboard. But for the beginning it's better to start with only one
and add sometimes a note from another fingering pattern.

Depending on the key and personal influences like finger size or strength most players use a
special parts of these patterns called boxes. Within this box you have all the notes from an octave
in a comfortable arrangement, for example small distances for small fingers or a position that
allows you to bend the important notes with your ring finger. Some technique oriented guitarists
tend to doom this box playing and like to fly all over the fretboard. However, as long as you
don't want to be a shredder, but play the Blues instead, it's okay. Spend your time searching for
positions you can put all your emotions to the string.

I---8---10--I
I---8---10--I
I-7-8-9-----I
I-----------I
I-----------I
I-----------I
Common box example for the A Blues scale
Here 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 don't 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?

Let's 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-A-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, it's 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, you'll 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.

Many more scales graphics with some nice extra features are at the chord generator.
Chromatic semitones 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Minor X- XX- X - XX- X - X
Pentatonic Minor X- - X- X - X- - X - X
Blues X- - X- X XX- - X - X
Pentatonic Major X- X- X - - X- X- - X
Mixolydian X- X- X X - X- XX - X
Major 1 - 2 - 3 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 1 (8)
Major (degree) I - ii - iii IV - V - vi - vii I
Chromatic semitones 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Universal scale generator: Use the scrollbar to move the root (key) note to the right position