Blues Scale Tabs
Sanny Olafeso
The blues scale is a six-note progression that sounds right at home in blues, rock, and country music. This scale is essentially the pentatonic scale plus one chromatic note, often called the blue note. This extra step gives the blues scale that unmistakably bluesy sound.
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Mastering the blues scale will give you the tools you need to improvise over a range of chord progressions, from a classic 12-bar blues to a driving rock and roll song. In addition to boosting your improvisational skills, practicing this scale will also help you train your ear so you can learn new bluesy licks to incorporate into your playing.
The intervals that make up the minor blues scale are the same in any key. These intervals are: A whole step and a half step, a whole step, a half step, a half step, a whole step and a half step, and a whole step.
To play the A minor blues scale in 1st position, use your index finger for notes on the 1st fret, your middle finger for notes on the 2nd, your ring finger for notes on the third, and your pinky for notes on the 4th fret.
To play the A minor blues scale in 5th position, use your index finger for notes on the 5th fret, your middle finger for the 6th, your ring finger for the 7th, and your pinkie for notes on the 8th fret. This scale starts on the 5th fret of the low E string. This version is also known as an E-shaped blues scale.
The A minor blues scale in the 7th position starts with your index finger on the 7th fret of the D string. You will need to shift your hand position up one fret when you reach the B string so you can play notes on the 8th fret with your index finger. This scale is also known as the D-shaped blues scale.
To play the A minor blues scale in 12th position, start with your index finger on the 12th fret of the A string. This scale does require you to shift your hand position up one fret once you reach the B string so that your index finger is on the 13th fret. Then, you must shift your hand back to your starting position for the high E string. This scale is also known as the A-shaped blues scale.
In this Technique of the Week, Kirk Fletcher (Fabulous Thunder Birds and Mannish Boys) teaches the pentatonic blues guitar scale which is essential for beginner blues guitarists. Fletcher breaks down this versatile scale and plays his favorite phrases rooted in pentatonic blues.
Each of these scale shapes are moveable. This means that you can play these patterns anywhere on the neck of your guitar. Learning and memorizing the notes on the E, A, and D strings of your guitar will come in handy as you practice moving each of these scales up and down the fretboard of your guitar.
Play the 12-bar blues using downstrokes and emphasize the first and third beat of every measure to get the right rhythm. You might also find this 12-bar blues described as a blues shuffle thanks to this shuffling rhythm. Here is a guitar tab showing a standard 12-bar blues pattern.
Blues Scale ExercisesPracticing the blues scale in A minor is a great way to train your fingers and your ears while you learn this versatile scale. First, practice playing the scales on your own until you are comfortable playing the A minor blues scale in each position.
Then, with a looping accompaniment of the 12-bar blues in A, practice playing the A minor blues scale in each position, but with a syncopated rhythm. Listen to the accompaniment and play the scale in sections, treating the notes on each string as one phrase. Once this feels easy to you, experiment by breaking up the scale into three- or four-note sections across strings.
Another great way to practice the blues scales on guitar is to spend time playing each shape up and down the neck of your guitar. Starting with the E-shaped blues scale, play each scale ascending and descending, beginning at the first fret and moving up one fret for each repetition of the shape. Play the scale in this way up to the thirteenth fret, then begin moving down one fret for each cycle until you arrive back at the first fret.
Playing the scales over a 12-fret span on your guitar will allow you to hear the scale in every key, helping you to train your ear. You can also use this exercise to help you memorize the notes on the E, A, and D strings by saying the root note of each scale as you go up and down the neck.
After the pentatonic minor scale and major scale, the blues scale is probably the most widely-used scale in guitar improvisation. Despite its name, the blues scale is not only used in blues music; it's also regularly used in rock, metal, jazz, and many other musical styles.
As we'll find in the notes in a blues scale section of this page, the blues scale is simply an embellishment of the standard pentatonic minor scale; an additional note is all that separates the blues scale from the pentatonic minor scale.
The basic blues scale pattern (pattern 1) can be extended up and down the guitar fretboard using the additional scale patterns. You'll see how to join the patterns up in order to create longer lines further down the page.
A tab example has been provided for each of the new patterns. The tab shows how the pattern can be used to play either a 1 octave or a 2 octave C blues scale. (Patterns 1 & 5 span 2 octaves, the others a single octave.)
Remember that the scale patterns may contain notes that extend the scale, either upwards or downwards. If you just want to play a single octave, play from a green note to the next green note, as shown in the tabs below.
The TAB below shows how pattern 3 can be used to play a 1-octave C blues scale either in open position (in which case one of the black circles on the diagram would represent the open G string), or starting in 13th position (i.e. with your index finger ready to play at the 13th fret).
For example, if you only knew the basic blues scale pattern (pattern 1) and were improvising over a chord progression in C, then you'd be limited to playing in 8th position (i.e. with your index finger positioned over the 8th fret.)
If you also knew blues scale pattern no. 3, then you could also improvise using a C blues scale in open position, or in 12th / 13th position (the pattern requires changing position). This would give you access to more notes.
When playing with scales, you can extend your lines by linking together adjacent scale patterns. Below you'll find a TAB example of this. Once you've seen how it works, try creating your own multi-position blues licks.
The blues scale contains a minor 3rd, giving it a minor tonality. This means that it can be used to improvise over minor chord sequences. For example, the A blues scale could be used to improvise over the following chord progression:
However, the blues scale is unusual because it also sounds good over blues chord progressions in major keys. For example, you could use a G blues scale to improvise over the following 12 bar blues in G:
Try and remember where the blues notes are in each of the 5 shapes. Then, when improvising, you can slide to or from them, string bend into them, play them subtly or stress them, emphasizing their bluesy sound.
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The green circles represent the tonic notes (in this case A) of the scale. Play from a green circle to the next green circle for a 1-octave scale. Patterns 1 and 5, which contain 3 tonic notes, can be used to play 2-octave A blues scales. (The other patterns, having only 2 green circles, can be used to play 1-octave A blues scales.)
All of the patterns contain additional notes allowing you to extend the scale without changing fretboard position. The TABs below each pattern show the scales represented by the patterns and omit these extra notes.
The blues scale patterns above are movable (transposable); the green circles represent the tonic note of the scale. Although the fret numbers show you where to play each pattern for an A blues scale, you can position the tonic notes over different notes on the fretboard to play different blues scales.
This is a more advanced, and arguably a more musical approach to improvisation. I recommend pursuing this course of study. The longer I live and play, the more increasingly I find it to be greatly rewarding.
Each of those chords is made up of 3 or 4 notes played at the same time. The bottom note we play is called the ROOT, and then the intervals above that are the 3rd, 5th, and (most commonly in the blues we also play the) 7th relative to the root.
Put on a 12-Bar blues jam track and play these in time with the chords as they happen. Once that gets to be second nature, then you could experiment with playing the arpeggios. Here are harmonica tabs for each arpeggio:
Regarding the blues scale there are the high notes. The second note of the blues scale (which is the interval of the minor 3rd relative to the root) and the fourth note of the blues scale (which is the interval of flat 5th relative to the root) are not available without the advanced techniques of overblows and overdraws.
I believe the true quality of the second note of the blues scale is neither a minor 3rd nor a major 3rd but a note halfway in between. Or perhaps even better, a note that is motion from minor 3rd to the major 3rd. This is why bending is so great in the lower octave. Pianists often will slur this playing the minor 3rd very quickly followed by the major 3rd. This can be a very gratifying approach to using the overblow in this context:
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