The Blues Scale Notes

[Clidia Panahon]

If you know the major pentatonic scale formula, you can also think of the major blues scale formula as the same thing except we flat the third and repeat it as a natural note. The flatted third is our blue note.

The term blues scale refers to several different scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. A blues scale is often formed by the addition of an out-of-key "blue note" to an existing scale, notably the flat fifth addition to the minor pentatonic scale. However, the heptatonic blues scale can be considered a major scale with altered intervals.

The first known published instance of this scale is Jamey Aebersold's How to Play Jazz and Improvise Volume 1 (1970 revision, p. 26), and Jerry Coker claims that David Baker may have been the first educator to organise this particular collection of notes pedagogically as a scale to be taught in helping beginners evoke the sound of the blues.[4]

In the Movable do solfge, the hexatonic major blues scale is solmized as "do-re-me-mi-sol-la"; In the La-based minor movable do solfge, the hexatonic minor blues scale is solmized as "la-do-re-me-mi-sol".

An essentially nine-note blues scale is defined by Benward and Saker as a chromatic variation of the major scale featuring a flat third and seventh degrees (in effect substitutions from Dorian mode) which, "alternating with the normal third and seventh scale degrees are used to create the blues inflection. These 'blue notes' represent the influence of African scales on this music."[12]

Hit songs in a blues key include, "Rock Me"..., "Jumpin' Jack Flash"..., "Higher Ground"..., "Purple Haze"..., "I Can See for Miles"..., "After Midnight"..., "She's a Woman"..., "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress"..., "Pink Cadillac"..., "Give Me One Reason"..., and many others.[13]

In jazz, the blues scale is used by improvising musicians in a variety of harmonic contexts. It can be played for the entire duration of a twelve bar blues progression constructed off the root of the first dominant seventh chord. For example, a C hexatonic blues scale could be used to improvise a solo over a C blues chord progression. The blues scale can also be used to improvise over a minor chord. Jazz educator Jamey Aebersold describes the sound and feel of the blues scale as "funky," "down-home," "earthy," or "bluesy."[14][page needed]

The blues scale (or Pentablues) is the pentatonic scale plus one note. This note became known as the blue note, and is the flat fifth in the case of the minor pentatonic, or the flat third in the case of the major pentatonic.

Notice that the note that was added is the same on both scales, just memorize the minor blues scale and transmit that note to the other shapes when making a solo. Check the shape of the A minor blues scale (with the blue note highlighted in red) below:

So, the use of the blues scale is the same as the pentatonic scale. We can apply it anywhere we would apply the traditional pentatonic, just watching out for the fact that the blue note is a passing note, that is, it should appear only in the middle of other notes, and not as a resting note.

Chromaticism of the blue note is one of the most pleasant chromaticisms there are, which is why this scale is so widespread. Knowing how to use the blues scale well takes some practice, but progress is very fast.

Of course, this does not mean that you should despise it, quite the contrary. Master it well, but continue studying other things later. Continue your learning in this book and mix your blues scale with other scales and resources to create your own flavor. It is important to highlight this before we continue.

Finally, we will show you the shapes of the blues scale in the entire fretboard of the guitar, because in string instruments, we have a different shape for each degree (as with the pentatonic scale). The idea is the same as we mentioned for the pentatonic scale: master the blues scale over the whole fretboard! As you may already be mastering the full pentatonic scale, this process is going to be smooth! So good studying!

Improvising over this new scale definitely gives me a more full sound, and I can get a sense where the second and major third fit in - however, the A always sounds like it takes the sound away from bluesy. Are major 6ths typically only used as passing tones when playing the blues, or should I focus more on this when the harmony shifts from I to IV or V?

What people usually mean by "blues scale" is the scale that you already knew, i.e. a minor pentatonic scale with an added b5 ("blue note"). What the author of that book refers to as blues scale is actually more like a collection of notes, all of which can be used over a blues progression. The difference with the standard blues scale is that not all of those notes will sound equally good over all three basic chords of the progression (I7, IV7, V7).

With the standard blues scale, even though some notes are pretty dissonant over some chords, none of them sounds really wrong to our ears in a blues context. Even the b5 can always be played as a passing tone. However, the other scale contains notes that would sound really wrong (if played as target notes) over certain chords. E.g. the note E simply sounds wrong over the IV7 chord (F7) because it clashes with the b7 of that chord (Eb), and not in a bluesy way but in a bad way.

There are two ways how you can understand that collection of notes referred to as "blues scale" by the author. It can be seen as the union of the notes of the standard blues scale and the notes of the major pentatonic scale:

Again, I wouldn't actually call those notes a scale, because there is no chord over which you can really play that scale. They are rather a collection of notes all of which can be useful at a certain moment in a blues progression. But then you could as well write down the chromatic scale and call it a blues scale, because if you know how to, you can play all 12 notes and make them sound good over a blues progression.

To answer your question about the major 6th, the A in the case of C major: it is not only a passing tone, it actually can be used over all 3 chords. Over the one it is a 13, over the IV it is the 3rd, and over the V it is the 9th. One way to use it, is to distinguish the I from the IV in your solo: you could play some motif over the I containing a Bb (and no E, because this won't work over the IV). Then you repeat that motive over the IV chord, but you exchange the Bb for the A. In this way you make the transition from I to IV very clear. But that's not the only use of the major 6th, because - as mentioned before - it is a valid tension for both I and V chords as well. One example: Larry Carlton start his solo over BP blues on the major 6th (he bends to it from the 5). Check it out here.

After all this, any of the twelve notes can fit into a blues (or any other) song. Using the blues notes from ,say, C work over C, but when the chord changes to F, the F blues notes will fit well. Of course, some are the same, but others have a better fit. As in there's no F in C blues, but it's there in F blues: and works well over an F chord!

So, over a typical three chord blues, particularly a major blues, any of the notes from Cmaj/min;Fmaj/min;G maj/min blues scales could be used. That covers, at a guess, all available notes! One wouldn'd use an E over C minor, etc, though.

The problem with answering the question "what notes are in the blues scale" is that the archetypal bluesy sound comes from bending and inflecting the notes within certain ranges, so any attempt at defining a blues scale in terms of the 12-note scale is only going to be an approximation.

So I don't personally play it with an A in. However, Blues is often about finding "the space between", and I wouldn't deny that with all that flexibility I've outlined (which already allows some major tonality) for that you couldn't add the A and move a little more towards major.

When you get a chord change to F or G (from tonic C) in blues, it's often much more like a transposition to F or G, so you are shifting your whole scale around, not just changing the chord; and yet there are often nods to western harmony too. Again, the space between!

The significance of the root note is that it determines where you will move the scale to place it in the key in which you want to play. If you are playing in the key of A, you want to move the scale pattern to where the root notes are on A notes, like this:

This would make it the A major pentatonic scale. For another example, if you were playing in the key of D, you would move the pattern further up the neck so that the root notes are on D notes, making it the D major pentatonic scale:

You can use the major blues scale when soloing over any part of a blues progression. So, if you are playing a blues progression in the key of E, you could use the E major blues scale. If you are playing over a blues progression in G, you could use the G major blues scale, and so on.

That means that you have two scale choices for any key in which you are playing. What I mean by that is if you are playing over a blues progression in E, you could use the E minor blues scale or the E major blues scale. If you are playing over a blues progression in G, you could use the G major blues scale or the G minor blues scale.

You could also change back and forth between major and minor blues scales as you are soloing. So, you could do a few licks using the major blues scale, then switch and do a few licks using the minor blues scale, and so on.

You just have to be careful with the IV chord. Lots of the notes in the major blues scale will sound fine over it, but there are a couple that will clash with the chord in an unappealing way. I personally prefer to use the minor blues scale over IV.

If however you feel comfortable playing the minor pentatonic scale, and you are now looking to add some variety to your lead playing, then getting to grips with the blues scale is one of the best places to start.

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