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Blues Scale Guitar

By learning the blues scale guitar players have a instant means of playing great-sounding licks and riffs.

Blues scales are very widely used in guitar improvisation. Despite the name, blues scales are not only used by
blues guitarists – rock and jazz guitarists regularly use them too.

Blues Scale Guitar Diagrams

In the following blues scale guitar fretboard diagrams, the root note of the scale is shown in green.

(Therefore, to play a G blues scale, you should position your fretting hand so that the green notes are over G notes
on the guitar fretboard.)

If you need to know how to read these diagrams, read the notes further down the page.

Blues Scale Guitar Diagrams: Click to enlarge

Blues Scale Guitar Tab

C Blues Scale Guitar Tab: Click to enlarge.

The above tab shows Scale Shape 1 being used to play a C Blues Scale at the 8th fret.
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Why Learn More Than One Scale Shape?

If you’re serious about playing lead guitar, you should try to learn blues scales in more than one position.

This means that there will be a blues scale at your fingertips wherever you are on the fretboard … whatever key
you’re playing in!

You’ll also be able to link the diagrams together, giving you the option of playing lines that go beyond a single
fretboard position.

Why not try to create some long, multi-octave, lines right now, using the scale shapes shown in the diagrams
above?

Blues Scale Guitar Diagrams With Blues Notes Marked

The ‘blues notes’ are the notes that give the blues scale its special character. They also distinguish a blues scale
from a regular minor pentatonic scale.

Below are the same blues scale guitar diagrams, but with the ‘blues notes’ (the flattened 5th notes) shown with a
blue circle.

Blues Scale Guitar Diagrams With Blues Notes Marked

How To Read ‘Moveable’ Blues Scale Fretboard Diagrams

The diagrams on this page represent a guitar fretboard. The vertical lines are the strings, and the horizontal lines
are the frets.

These circles show where you should put your fingers in order to play a blues scale.

The diagrams show ‘movable’ shapes. This means that they can be used to play blues scales starting with any
note.

For example, in order to play an A blues scale, you should position your hand so that the green root notes of the
diagram are positioned over A notes on the guitar fretboard.

(E.g. play Shape 1 at the 5th fret)

If you wanted to play a C blues scale, you could play Shape 4 at the 3rd fret.

Note that the diagrams show all of the notes of a scale available at a particular fretboard position. This is useful
for improvisors who may not always start on the root note of a scale. If you wish to practice playing scales up and
down, start with the root notes and ignore the notes above and below the octaves you want to play.
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Blues Scale Guitar Theory

Blues scales are basically the same as pentatonic minor scales but an additional note: the ‘blues note’, ‘flat five’,
or – technically – the flattened fifth note of the scale.

For example, adding an Eb note to a standard A pentatonic minor scale will change it into an A blues scale.

A Pentatonic Minor Notes: A, C, D, E, G

A Blues Scale Notes: A, C, D, Eb, E, 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, emphasising their bluesy sound.

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Scale Spellings
Blues Scale Spelling: 1, b3, 4, b5, 5, b7

For a guitar lesson on using blues scales, with an example guitar solo and a backing track for you to play your
own blues solo over, see this page: How To Use Blues Scales.

You can practice improvising using blues scales with our blues guitar backing tracks.

To see how a master uses blues scales, check out B. B. King!

Bues Scale Guitar Conclusion

We hope that you have enjoyed learning about the blues scale. It’s one of the main scales used in lead guitar
solos; in fact, it’s the only scales that some guitarists know!

The fretboard diagrams show you how to play the scales all over the guitar neck, in any key. The more shapes you
learn, the more fluent your playing will become. Why not use our backing tracks to learn and master this scale?
You can hear them on this page: Blues Backing Tracks.
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How To Use Blues Scales

This is a guitar lesson on how to use blues scales, with audio examples and a backing track so you can play your
own blues solo.

After the pentatonic minor scale, the blues scale is probably the most commonly used guitar scales in
improvisation. In fact, the blues scale is simply a pentatonic minor scale with an extra note added. This extra note,
or blue note, is a the flattened fifth, and is what gives the scale its immediately recognisable ‘bluesy’ sound.

he flat five (or flattened fifth, or blues note – there are several ways of referring to it) interval is easy to hear on
the guitar. Play the root note on the sixth (lowest) string, then move to the fifth string and play the note that is a
fret higher. Now play both notes at once. It is this slightly discordant interval that gives the blues scale its
distinctive sound.

In the key of A, the flat five would be an E flat. In the key of E, the flat five would be a B flat. In improvisation,
musicians can either play the blues note quickly, as part of a phrase, before resolving the discordant note into the
perfect fifth or fourth (the notes directly above and below the blues note) , or they can emphasise the blues note,
by holding it for several beats or by playing it heavily. Learn the blues scales here: Blues Scales Guitar, and
identify the blues notes in each scale shape. Experiment with playing them as part of some improvised phrases,
and find out how you like to play them.

Blues Scale Example Solo

Listen to this example of how to use blues scales. The solo uses G blues scales. (See this page: Blues Scales
Guitar, for a number of guitar scale shapes that can be used to play blues scales all over the guitar neck.)

How To Use Blues Scales - Example.mp3

The example guitar solo is performed over this progression:

Blues Scale Play Along Backing Track

Blues Scale Backing Track.mp3

Now play along to this backing track, and improvise your own solo using the blues scale. Once you have
learned the basic notes, and worked out the blues notes, you could start to incorporate some other blues guitar
techniques, such as string bends, slides, and heavy vibrato.
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Guitar Scales Backing Tracks.

Our Blues Guitar Backing Tracks provide excellent practice for soloing with blues scales, and have been
produced so you can use them in performance, too. Featuring several popular blues styles and keys, they will
provide inspiration whenever you need it! For more details and to play along with samples tracks see: Blues
Backing Tracks.

Play along to this blues guitar backing track using C blues scales.