Blues Guitar Scale - The Most Important Scale You Should Know

There are many scale that can be played on the guitar, but one of the most common ones and the first one I show all my students is the blues guitar scale. The reason I love this scale and teach it first even though the pentatonic is slightly easier and more widely used is because it sounds more musical and by learning is early on my students are already equipped with a scale that can transcend many styles of music. Below I will teach you the basics of the blues guitar scale and how to implement it into your playing.

First lets take a look at the structure of the blues scale. A blues guitar scale is simply a minor pentatonic scale with one extra note. The extra note is referred to as the blue note because of the unique sad quality it brings to the scale.

An E minor pentatonic scale would be made up of the notes:

E G A B D

To get the blues guitar scale you add a B-flat (Bb) into the scale:

E G A Bb B D

The blues scale was designed to play over all dominant seventh chords. A typical 12-bar blues in the key of E would use a I7 - IV7 - V7 chord progression. However it is not required to use seventh chords. You might also use regular major and minor chords and still the blues scale would sound great over them.

In modern times the blues scale can be found in many forms of music. Rock, metal, and country often rely heavily on it's use for riffs and lead guitar. It can also be found in Jazz although usually mixed in as a hybrid scale with some other modal based diatonic scale.

The blues guitar scale is arguable the grandfather of all guitar scales. it's unique sound and playability make it a great choice for many styles of music. I always encourage my students and any one interested in becoming a versatile guitar player to master this scale because it is easy to use in almost any application.

John Hughes has been playing guitar for longer than he can remember. Aside from teaching guitar for the last three years he enjoys writing articles about the importance of guitar scales and other guitar related topics. If you are serious about mastering the building blocks for playing lead guitar you owe it to yourself to check out Guitar-Scale-Mastery.info