Blues Guitar Improvisation

Ok so this is one of my favourite blues guitar improvisation tips! I love tricks you can learn that improve your playing instantly without having to practice for months at a time. Call me lazy…I call it being time efficient haha! This technique gives you a whole new sound you can  add to your skillset with minimum effort. So here goes…

Ok, so the two shapes I’ve talked about so far are the minor pentatonic scale and the blues scale, both of which are MINOR scales. To break it down to it’s most basic form MINOR scales sound kinda sad and MAJOR scales sound a little more upbeat. I know some of you more experienced guys will be rolling your eyes at that but it’s easiest way to get the idea across! If you think about it, blues is kinda meant to be sad music “I got the blues” but we all know from experience that there’s a whole load of cool upbeat blues that makes you wanna shake your tailfeather. This is where the MAJOR pentatonic scale comes into play.

So, is it really that easy to play? OH YEAH! It’s EXACTLY the same shape as the minor pentatonic, you just play it 3 frets down. Start from your root note as you always would, then count down 3 frets and play the same shape and hey presto instant MAJOR pentatonic scale! So for example if you were playing in the key of E count backwards from the 12th fret, and play your pentatonic shape at the 9th fret. Try it now, you’ll notice it has a cool BB King type vibe to it. It’s also THE scale to use for country…so you can work some nice country blues styles into your playing!

That’s all for today guys, now go have some fun!

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