Blues (Minor Blues) Scale Guitar Patterns- Chart, Key of A

Guitar Lesson Summary & Chart Explanation

Prerequisites:

None. This is the first scale you should learn. That goes for my guitar students and those studying independently. This is the hammer of the gods of rock. Don't waste time on Minor Pentatonic yet, this one simply owns it.

Learn it Now, Use it Forever

Let me let you in on a dirty little secret of music education. Its extermely common for books, videos, and teachers to show you what they think is easier so you'll feel like you are making more progress. Then you play with other people and find you just can't hang because all you know is "beginner" stuff. The truth is everything seems next to impossible when you are starting out, so you might as well use the actual chords and scales that big boys and girls use. If you play Rock, Blues, or Metal guitar, the Blues Scale is the single most important scale to know. The Blues Scale is is both historically and theoretically the foundation of all of three genres (and their sub-genres).

"Blues Scale" vs. "Minor Blues Scale"

The Blues Scale Name Game

Since it contains a flatted third and a natural fifth, the Minor blues Scale is, by definition a Minor scale. This is the scale you see in the Guitar Scale chart on this page. There is also a Major Blues Scale (See Modes of the Minor Blues Scale Below), and both are commonly used by guitar players in several different musical genres.

Modes of the Minor Blues Scale:

Unlike the Major or Minor scale, which have functional (meaning they sound good at least sometimes) modes built on every note in the scale, the Blues Scale only has one functional mode, the Major Blues scale mentioned above. The Major Blues scale is built on the flatted third scale degree ( 3 ).

The Minor Blues Scale, not the Major Blues, is "Standard"

The Minor Blues scale is the far more commonly used scale of the two, so as in the norm in music, it gets shortened to "The Blues Scale." Its just like with chords. If I asked you to play a G chord you would (I hope) play a G Major chord. Since the most common type of chord is major we can shorten the name of G Major chord to just G chord. So when we say "the Blues Scale" we are just using a shortened name for the Minor Blues Scale. If we want to refer to the Major Blues scale we must say Major Blues Scale.

Minor Blues Scale: Scale Degrees and Scale Spelling

Remember scales degrees are numbered, by convention, with the Major Scale as a baseline (Thus Major is numbered 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, with no flats or sharps. When a degree in a scale is a half step lower (aka one fret down) than the Major we say its flatted, when a half step higher (aka one fret up) we say its sharped. We then call the resulting degree the flat or sharp (insert the number name here). For example the blues we've been discussing has a flatted third scale degree, which is commonly referred to as the flat three."

The Pentatonic Blues Scale for Guitar?

This is one of my favorite terms of the Internet Era. I always click through to any site that has this as a page title when searching. They always have the same scale featured here. Which leads me to one of two conclusions:

• The author can't count higher than five
• The author has a weak understanding of the common numerical prefixes used in the English language