The Blues Scale

The blues scale is the minor pentatonic plus one extra note: the flat five, the blue note. On its own it sounds wrong. Passing through it, it sounds exactly like the blues. This chapter shows you where that note lives on the fretboard and, more important, how to use it.

You'll start with the A blues scale in 5th position, right on top of minor pentatonic box 1, and learn to bend into the flat five as well as fret it. Then you'll play the full box with alternate picking, and work through short licks that slide through the blue note on the way to somewhere stronger: rising lines, falling runs and triplet figures. The last lesson moves to the blues scale in E in open position, where ringing open strings and hammer-ons give your licks a loose, Texas-flavored sound.

Every blues scale guitar tab exercise plays in your browser with a click, so you can hear the tension and release before you play it. By the end, you'll treat the flat five as a passing color, never a resting place.