How To REALLY Improvise Using The Blues Scale

[Music] hi guys welcome back today I'm going to be teaching you all about the blue scale so to start with what is the blue scale it is basically a very versatile scale that is commonly found in the Blues but it can actually be used in anything and still sounds great the main reason it's so great for beginners to learn is because there's essentially no wrong notes so you can play any note of the scale and it will still sound good so let's get on with it the scale is built from the following intervals if we're counting in semitones it goes 3 2 1 1 3 2 so for example if we want to work out the C blue scale we begin on the Note C and then we go up three semmit tones 1 2 3 two semitones 1 2 1 1 3 and then finally two semmit tones taking us back to the note C so this is how the the scale looks and this is how it sounds and you can hear straight away that it has a proper blues sound so let's look at another example let's say the E blue scale so we would start on the note E go up three semmit tones 1 2 3 two semmit tones 1 1 2 1 1 3 [Music] 2 so if we come back to our C Blues we can have it go using this over a 12 Bar Blues and see so the 12 Bar Blues goes like this C7 for four bars F7 for two bars C7 for two bars G7 for one bar F7 for one bar and then C7 for the last two bars and the C blue scale fits really nicely over these chords so you just want to play around and see what patterns and riffs you can come up with experimenting is definitely the best way to get good at using this scale so here's an example of the sea Blues [Music] so that was just using the notes from the C blue scale and it can actually produce quite a nice sound so we've looked at using the blue scale over the 12 Bar Blues but we can also use it over more Jazzy backings as long as the backing stays within the same key throughout the blue scale will fit and to pick the right scale to use we have to take it from the minor key so if the backing was in E Minor we would play the E blue scale but if it was in G major which is the relative major of E minor we would still play the E blue scale so if we take the E blue scale we can have it Go improvising with it over one of the piano Pig backing tracks in E Minor so here it [Music] is so we can hear it's very different from the 12 Bar Blues but it stays within the key of E minor so we can play our e blue scale over the top and it will fit quite nicely [Music] a [Music] again that was just using notes from the blue scale so it really is a great scale and a perfect introduction to improvisation for beginners I'll put a link to that backing track in the description so you can have it Go yourself and just have fun with it play around experiment and see what cool things you can come up with let me know how you get on I'm always interested to see people's progress and if you have any questions as always just leave them in the comment box below thanks for watching and I'll see you in another video

Channel: PianoPig

Views: 2,857,080

Keywords: blues scale, piano, improvise, solo, how to, blues, jazz, e blues, c blues, beginner, riff, pentatonic, improvising, 12 bar blues, backing track, pianopig, pig, scale, chord, minor, major, play, guitar, tutorial, simon warner

Id: CjJwxtahGtw

Length: 6min 25sec (385 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 17 2017