Blues Guitar Improvisation

Ok so aside from the pentatonic scale (see last post) the most common scale for blues guitar improvisation is erm…the blues scale! You’ll be happy to hear that you can learn this with minimal effort! It’s simply adding one single note to the pentatonic scale, that’s it!!! You’ll notice when you start playing around with this shape that by just adding that one single note (known as the blue note) you’ll end up with a much more ‘bluesy’ flavor.

So which note do we add? It’s dead easy, start from the first note of the scale, move across one string and up one fret and there you have it. So if you were playing in A, you’d start on the 5th fret of the low E string move across a string to the 5th fret of the A string, then jump up 1 fret to the 6th. That’s the blue note!

There are actually five shapes for the blues scale, just like with the pentatonic scale. In most of the shapes you’ll find the blue note crops up twice! In pattern 1 in A, it appears on the A string - 6th fret AND the G string - 8th fret! Just work out what the actual blue note is (A, B, C etc) then see how many times that note shows up in the pattern. So there you have it! The Blues Scale!

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