Blues Scales?

  1. Ellsdemon
    Ellsdemon
    Hey everyone.

    Wanted to thank you all again for the great response on being stuck in a funk. Taking some advice and working on base stuff.

    One thing I'd really like to work on is blues scales. Problem is I can't easily find a PDF on the interboob. Does anyone out there have one or point the finger towards one?
    I think I remember blues scales is sliding down one fret
  2. HonketyHank
    HonketyHank
    Brad Laird has 3 or 4 pages of exercises with the blues scale in his "Mandolin Training Camp" book. He starts with this illustration of the G Major scale (1st measure) vs G Blues scale (2nd measure).



    Don't want to reproduce Brad's material at length here; he does have it for sale at his website. NFI. He also has a section on blues scales in his Mandolin Master Class book.

    The interesting thing is the full tone and a half jumps in the scale which results in 6 notes in the scale instead of the usual 7 found in classical scale modes.
  3. Mark Gunter
    Mark Gunter
    For the pentatonic blues scale, you add the b5 to the minor pentatonic scale (yielding six notes) -or- you add the b3 to the major pentatonic scale (yielding six notes). This gives you one brief chromatic run in the scale, and it is within these notes the bends are often used in blues and rock music. I often practice major pentatonic blues scale.

    Another blues scale contains 9 notes - it is simply the major scale (7 notes) with the flat 3rd and flat 7th added. That results in two chromatic runs in the scale (2, b3, 3 and 6, b7, 7). Those chromatic runs are heard commonly in blues and rock music. Often strings are bent to the b3 or b7 in those genre as well.

    Here is a brief article outlining three blues scale recipes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues_scale

    Pentatonic blues scale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddd2DIQRtwQ
  4. Ellsdemon
    Ellsdemon
    Awesome, Thanks to both of you!!!!
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