Hey I'm Nate Savage and welcome to video #7 of the Blues Guitar Quick-Start Series.
In this lesson, we're going to hit up a little bit more theory and talk about how the blues
scale is actually made. If you don't know much about theory, that's totally fine. You
don't have to go through this lesson to continue with this series, but if you are curious about
more music theory, as far as the blues goes, this is going to be a really valuable
lesson for you. As I mentioned before in this series, the
blues is kind of a hybrid between a major and minor tonalities. It's its own little world
and understanding how that works can be really valuable for your playing. So what we're going
to do is build a blues scale. We're going to start with the major scale. The major scale is
where all of our chords and scales come from. So, that's our starting point, the major scale.
We're going to turn that major scale into a minor scale, turn that minor scale into
a minor pentatonic scale. And then finally, we're going to add one note to the minor pentatonic
scale to turn it into a blues scale. Let's get started with the major scale. Like
I said, the major scale is where all of our chords and scales come from. And I don't want
to get too much into the theory of things right now. I don't want to get too deep into
it but you need to know that the starting point for building a blues scale is to start
with its equivalent major scale. In this case, we're going to build an E blues scale, so
we need to start with an E major scale. The E major scale is spelt E, F#, G#, A, B,
C#, D#. And again, if you don't know all those note names that's fine. I'm just going to
basically play through a common shape for an E major scale or any major scale. And you
may not know the shape but that's fine too.
There are lots of different shapes for the major scale but this particular one let's you see how changing just a few notes in the
major scale can give us our minor scale. Now the next step to making a blues scale is to
turn our major scale into a minor scale and to do that, what you're going to have to do
is change 3 notes of the major scale. What you can do is lower those 3 notes by one fret
or one half-step and that will give us our equivalent E minor scale. The notes you're
going to have to lower are the third, the sixth, and the seventh notes of the major scale.
So, I'm just going to play the first octave of this major scale again.
So, I played 7 notes and then back up to the octave. If you take the third, sixth, and seventh
notes of that major scale and lower them by one half-step. You'll end up with a minor scale.
So let's do that, first note, second note, the third note would normally be here. So
we're going to take that and lower by one half-step. Fourth note is regular, fifth note
is regular, sixth note would normally be here, so we're going to lower that by one half-step.
And then the seventh note would normally be here. We're going to lower that by one half-step.
And then the octave. So we went from an E major scale.
Lowered the third, sixth, and seventh notes to end up with an E minor scale. And if you look
at the shape for this one, you continue the same thing up to second octave and you end
up with this.
And you don't have to know the scale shape but it's really great reference for seeing how moving just three notes around can turn your E major scale into an E minor scale.
The next step to creating our blues scale
is to turn this minor scale, this E minor scale into a minor pentatonic scale. And it's
pretty simple to do this. All you have to do is take away the second note and the sixth
note from this E minor scale. So I'm just going to play the first octave of this E minor
scale again. And all we have to do is take out, like I said the second and the sixth
note. So, one, leave the second out go right to the three, four, five, the sixth would
be here, so leave that out and then seven to the octave. So, when you leave those 2
notes out, here's what it was. And then here's what it is as a minor pentatonic scale when
we leave those two out. Now, for the second octave of this minor scale,
we can take that second and sixth note out again. And then we’ll end up with the second
octave of this minor pentatonic scale but often we'll take the 2 notes up here that
are left and move them back here. That's why you're going to see those notes just jump
from up here all the way back here. So we have a more convenient shape for our minor
pentatonic scale. The last step to creating a blues scale is
to take that minor pentatonic scale that we just learned and add one note to it, the flat
5 note. So, let's go ahead and do that. Here's what we ended up with our first octave of
our minor pentatonic scale. Now, we've just got to add a flat 5 note in there and I'll
just tell you on the 13th fret of the A string is where your flat 5 note is. So we have to
add that note right there with our middle finger to the shape. And if you continue up
the shape, the next flat 5 note is right here on the 15th fret with your pinky. And the
rest of the shape is the same. So, flat 5 and another one and you end up with your blues scale.
So we started with an E major scale, lowered 3 of the notes in the E major scale, the third,
the sixth, and the seventh by one half-step to get a minor scale. Took that minor scale,
took 2 notes away, the second, the sixth notes to get a minor pentatonic scale. And then
we added one note, a flat 5 note to the minor pentatonic scale to end up with our blues scale.
This lesson had a lot of theory in it, I know.
I didn't want to overwhelm you but I do want to make sure that you had the necessary minimum
background kind of for blues theory to be exposed to. Just to understand what's going
on to the blues a little more. There are other ways to think about building the blues, scale
but relating everything back to the major scale is a really great way to kind of see
the big picture and where everything comes from.
In the next lesson, we're going to talk about how to start choosing your notes in the blues
scale instead of just randomly playing through scale shapes. If you have any questions, you
can leave them here in the comments or e-mail me nate@guitarsystem.com. See you around.