Master the BLUES SCALE [With One Simple Shape]

foreign coming up in this video the easy way to play Blues solos all across the neck so I guess if you clicked on this video you want to learn the blues but I need to be honest with you I can't possibly teach you the whole of the Blues in a short YouTube video but what I can give you is this a super simple blues scale shape you can use all over the neck to play great Blues solos in 99 of real life situations we'll start with a slow minor blues foreign [Music] don't be fooled into thinking that because what I'm about to show you is simple it's only for beginners this is a real deal authentic method that's behind many legendary solos throughout history and to start we need just four notes to begin we need to create what I call the primary pentatonic box which looks like this [Music] so we're in the key of A minor here and the notes we want are five and seven on the D string and five and seven on the G string so these four notes are g a c and d and this little box should be considered your home base for Blues playing and immediately allows you to start creating riffs [Music] foreign we'll see how you can take these riffs all across the neck now anyone who's seen my video on the a minor pentatonic shape will already recognize this box and that's because the blues scale is simply the pentatonic with one extra special note added which we'll look at shortly but for now I just want to focus specifically on how we use these pentatonic notes to get a real bluesy feel the first thing we need to zoom in on is the root note which is this note here this a of the seventh fret of the D string and many of your Blues phrases will resolve back to this note [Music] now the first way we can result to it is simply by coming from the G note below like this [Music] so you can either play both notes or Hammer onto it or slide back into the root now the second way we can result to the root is coming from the note above which is this C the minor third at the fifth fret of the G string but here's where the blues flavor really kicks in with this note we want to make a small quarter step Bend [Music] so we're not aiming for another note just pushing it slightly sharp you want the unbent note to sound first and then bend up a little just as you're about to resolve to the room [Music] now just with these few ideas we can already create bluesy phrases like this [Music] then back to our little box this fourth note the D of the seventh fret on the G string we can either make a full Bend up or a half note Bend [Music] but I'll talk more about this in a moment so now let me play solo over an A minor blues using just these four notes and see how already we have a huge amount of Music at our fingertips foreign [Music] [Music] the full blues scale firstly let's take our four note box and then add to it this e at the ninth fret on the G string now a great way to play this is to slide up to it [Music] sliding back down from it also works great now with this extra note added we now have the full five note a minor pentatonic scale shape one two three four five so I said earlier that the blues scale is just the pentatonic with one extra note so let's go ahead and add that possibly the most important note here the blue note so the blue note is here this E flat and this is a flat five a chromatic note in between two pentatonic notes and as soon as we bring in this note the blues flavor goes up to a whole new level foreign so as a general rule you don't want to linger too long on this blue note and one great way to play it is to slide off it back to the D below like this so it's like we're reaching out to this blue note and then returning home to our four note box [Music] so these six notes together make up the full blue scale not the Fisher Price beginner version this is the full complete whole actual blues scale right here now I find the best way to finger this pattern as a scale is like this one three one three two three one three one three two three now in practice you'll often be slipping over to the blue note with your third finger like this from the Fret below [Music] but in any case it's generally wise to keep the finger in so that the third finger covers this note the seventh fret on the G string as this is the strongest finger for bending [Music] so earlier on I mentioned that we could Bend this D at the seventh fret here either up half a step or up a full step so now you can see that when you're making these bends the notes you're aiming for are either of these two notes of the two Frets above [Music] foreign [Music] then if you make a full Bend up and let it come down slowly you'll find that Blue Note in there somewhere along the way as well [Music] so now our solo again using this full blues scale and hear how this Blues flavor is really coming to life [Music] um foreign [Music] [Music] let's start moving it around the neck let's start by playing it lower and we can play that same four note primary pentatonic box starting here at the third fret on the low E so we've got g a c and d and then once again the two Frets above the blue note E flat and E to complete the blue scale [Music] now any licks we played in that first position [Music] we can play in just the same way but down here now we've learned the scale in two positions we need a way to fluidly move between them when I start in a lower position I land on the final Note with my third finger like this you'll see this leaves me in the perfect place to move seamlessly into the next position of the scale which starts at the fifth fret of the D string so I can play the lower position here and then straight into that middle position we learned earlier [Music] foreign s meet you'll see we formed a further little box these four notes Here five and seven on the A and five and seven on the D and this is what I call the secondary pentatonic box ah blue note also falls just within this box Now by playing a lick in this secondary box we can link up licks from the two different positions we've looked at for example this low position lick secondary box lick same Lick in the middle position [Music] I've already covered this in more detail in my previous pentatonic video so do watch that if this is moving a bit fast for you but now let's hear another solo I'll start down low and then move up to the middle of the guitar [Music] [Music] thank you now let's look at taking this higher up the neck of the guitar so back to the middle position on the d and g strings and let's look at how we transition up higher to the B and high e strings [Music] now this time just because of the way the guitar is tuned we need to be mindful that we need to shift up one fret when we transition over to the B string so it's just going to look like this the shape we've been looking at one three one three two three up to here and now we're ready to transition but starting from the eighth fret on the B string [Music] play that exact same shape [Music] so once again it's g a c d E flat or blue note and then up to the E the exact same blues scale pattern but on the top two strings now because we're in a higher register playing two notes at once can sign gray for example this e that the ninth fret of the G string together with this G and the eighth fret on the B slide into those they sound great together and because they fall right at the point where these two positions be [Music] we can play these two together and from there we can easily choose to go either up or down [Music] so here's all three positions we've looked at together so all together slowly it's going to look like this low position [Music] Middle High [Music] foreign a bit quicker foreign again over the a minor track using all three positions and just see how effortless it becomes to move around the guitar then after that I'll show you how this works in a major key [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] this would also work for major keys and here's how with the blues one of the classic characteristic sounds is blending minor Melodies over major chords so put quite simply we can play basically the same minor licks over a major chord progression so these a minor blue skull licks over an a major chord progression and that would sound something like this [Music] foreign thing just to focus on here is this little Bend we've been playing on the minor third this is really important to make this work over a major chord progression and you can afford to bend it up a little bit further over a major chord so now I'll solo over a typical 12 Bar Shuffle in a major and just notice how this a minor blues scale still sounds great [Music] [Music] thank you so there you have it a simple but super effective way to play the blues thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Jules Guitar

Views: 173,869

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Id: pxG2JKoAuhs

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 04 2023