HOW to USE the DIMINISHED SCALE over a BLUES progression. (Based off a Robben Ford Lesson)

all right what's up guys this is a video I'm responding to Barr Keeter bark eater 9606 uh from about a week and a half ago please do do a video on adding diminished scales uh Robin Ford ideas into your Blues playing um yeah so thanks for the suggestion and I I went ahead and I looked up a robin Ford video um and I had heard of him before but it was just nice to hear him talk about his playing and I listen to him play a little bit um very tasteful player really um really a killer guitar player so thanks for showing me that guy but basically the the lesson I saw just he was kind of touching upon the diminished scale and I wanted to go over that um I just started you know working on it from the video um from Robin what he had been mentioning and so the first thing I did was um of course I had to learn the scale I intellectually understand it half step whole step half step so [Music] on one string it's pretty simple to see so I wanted to practice it moving [Music] and I just kind of did one octave for a while um and just kind of getting the pattern down and it's a very symmetrical shape hmm and so after doing that for a while I also wanted to analyze it of course I want to see why does it work how does it fit so the main ideas that you have with this diminished scale over the one chord and I've been mostly just using it over the one chord just to get comfortable with that and I teach this to a lot of my students when you're learning new things it's really important to keep it simple because if you start throwing a bunch of things on top of itself it's it gets you kind of it's harder and harder to focus so just over this G7 chord so what the diminished scale does it gives us the one of course and then it gives us this flat two which is a super tense now and you know if not even thinking diminished scale if you just hit that I actually do play that note off and on when I'm playing bluesy type stings foreign [Music] it's kind of exotic sounding it sounds pretty cool and the more you you know really understanding you're just creating some specific tension with that you call it the flat tube or the flat nine very Jazzy a lot of the Jazz guys use that that note um and so especially over a dominant seven the chord now then you've got the flat three and the three which is already what's going on in the Blues you may notice that the dominant seven chord has a major three but the blue scale has a minor three so I already kind of utilized that in my playing again I don't think of it as the diminished scale I just think of it as the flat three and the three so it's been fascinating to kind of learn this diminished scale and see how it kind of plays out here so so far nothing too unusual um the flat 9 is definitely something that you have to practice using but um then the next part was a little tricky for me because if we're just sticking with the diminished scale we're not playing a four we're skipping the four going straight to that sharp four which is the blue note so that of course that [Music] so so that one I obviously I'm gonna use that one too I guess I think of it but I usually think of it as playing four to the five kind of as a passing tone or or down to the four whereas in the diminished scale of midst of four but I understand I mean you can obviously play the four if you want to [Music] play all those notes so anyway moving forward so we've got the one the flat two the flat three the three the sharp four flat well sharp four in this situation but you could call it the tritone or the balloon out the five and then we're jumping up to the six and then the flat seven and so those are very popular those are that's in the mixolydian scale so as a as a teacher as someone who studies guitar and I encourage you to do this this is why the scale degrees are so important because after playing this diminished scale and learning it realizing how I already used these notes that are not in the blues scale um or even in the chord tones um I can start to use the diminished scale now um with with some ideas just come it's kind of I'm combining all those ideas so I'm a little new at this but let me just play a little bit here over this G chord so normally I would just do some kind of like maybe if I wanted to do like [Music] so that's kind of some standard Blues but if I wanted to do that diminished scale see here [Music] yeah that's there's some cool I mean I'm already playing different I've never played that way before thinking you're walking up that diminished scale whoops let's see here thank you go ahead and go to the four chord there's the five four [Music] so there's some ideas there now I'm obviously um you know I I think this is just a good I just kind of like to kind of reinforce the idea of of knowing your scale degrees because once I learned the scale I just kind of learned the pattern um it's pretty symmetrical um then that's one thing but I really noticed that I could incorporate it in my playing when I really was just paying attention to the scale degrees six and the flat seven and the one in the flat two flat three and three sharp four and five back in the six flat seven one because I really see those skill degrees especially in this first position over your bar chord your e shape I mean uh yeah so I hope this helps [Music] um and I appreciate you you know throwing that question out there if you have any questions at all in regards to that lesson or you want me to touch on anything else feel free to leave a comment all right peace

Channel: Brandon Vogt

Views: 2,227

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Id: 9BbF_9eyQx8

Length: 8min 40sec (520 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023