A word of caution, though: Treat the blues note like a spice. Once you’ve got the pentatonic box patterns down, it won’t take you long to get the hang of their blues equivalents. The same goes for the G major blues scale:įinally, here’s the diagonal pattern for the G major blues scale:Īnd there you have it, the blues scale. This may look intimidating, but they’re essentially several octave boxes strung together diagonally. (Like before, white dots denote root notes and blue dots refer to blue notes.)Īnd now, for the diagonal pattern. This image below depicts a single-octave box pattern for the G minor blues scale. So with these patterns in your bag of tricks, you’ll be a more confident and versatile guitarist. Single-octave boxes are the building blocks of diagonal patterns that stretch across the entire length and width of the fretboard. Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? Now, on to the fun stuff. But this time, in addition to paying attention to the root note (indicated in white), take notice of the blue note (indicated in blue) as well.Įverything remains the same as in the minor pentatonic scale, save for the addition of the ♭5 note.Īnd here’s the major blues scale pattern: To keep things familiar, we’re going to use the CAGED system once again. Blues box patternsīox patterns are useful as they paint a clearer picture of where the blue notes lie within their respective scales.
#BLUES SCALE GUITAR HOW TO#
Understanding how to derive these notes will grant you deeper insight into blues scales and how they’re entwined with their pentatonic cousins. If you want to start playing lead guitar, improvising blues and rock, or writing classic sounding rock tunes, the pentatonic blues scale is definitely the place to start. However, it’s not enough to memorise the blue notes for all the keys. The pentatonic, or pentatonic minor scale, or simply blues scale, is the basis of the majority of blues, rock and metal music of the 20th century.
You’ll only have to add a C note to the A major pentatonic. So this is what it looks like in the A major key. On the other hand, the blues note for the major blues scale is a flattened third. As you can see, we’ve simply added a blue note – a flattened fifth – to the minor pentatonic scale.