Jack here, Jbf music and guitar lessons, in this quick guitar tricks, we’re looking
at the often neglected Phrygian blues scale; if you want an example of this in action,
check out live versions of Jamrroqui’s Deeper Underground- link in the description and pinned
comment. Feel free to use the timestamps in the pinned comment and video description to
navigate to whatever parts are most relevant to yourself.
Right, the scale it’s self is a Phrygian, with the added blues note But rather than
start there I want to peel it back a bit. First up, lets stick with a C minor blues
scale, like in bar 1 there. However we’ll play this over a Phrygian backing. I’ll
link to the full jam track with that card in the top right along with a more mellow
version, but for now, here’s a clip of it. Just play some of your usual blues scale licks,
listening to how it sounds and feels against this backing.
Ok, so hopefully that sounded a bit edgy, but kind of cool as well. It might take a
few tries to get to the stage where it feels a bit more natural. The reason it might sound
weird is because Phrygian blues is not that common a sound, when compared to The Dorian
blues scale, for example, lesson card up there. Even though you’re sticking to a C blues
scale it will sound more exotic, purely because of the backing. Which is a bit of a bonus
tip- a more sophisticated backing, of modal backing, can make what you’re playing sound
more complex, or modal, even if it’s based in the pentatonic. And this blending idea
will be a foundation for this tutorial, a great tip I heard from Guthrie Govan is to
think of scales as dimmer switch, the pentatonic is one shade, Phrygian is a another. Rather
than being binary on/off, we can blend in different shades of each scale. So, a great
way of doing this is, like you just did, start with your blues scale, but then start adding
in more notes, here we’ll use the the b2nd. A real key to the Phrygian sound. It occurs
in these 3 places which you can see in bar 2. And when we put that into the scale, which
is bar 3 . So now I’d suggest playing over that same backing, but this time when you
want to hear more Phrygian shades play that note a bit more.
The next notes we’ll add in are the b6ths in that 1st bar there . When we do this we
get the full Phrygain Blues scale .
The reason I’ve stripped back the scale and built it up, is to outline that a lot
of the licks and ideas you already have will translate well, and with some minor tweaks
others will slot right in there as well. The risk of learning a new scale is that we just
meander up and down it and all the stuff we know as players goes out the window; well
that certainly was the case with myself in years gone by anyway! So again, when you want
shades of Phrygain, put in the b2nd and b6th, when you want it less edgy, lean more on the
blues or minor pentatonic scale. Here’s that backing track again
Bonus tip while these notes add some nice flavour, resolving to the Root, b3rd and 5th
most of the time will still sound great. In particular I really like ending a lick on
the 5th, when playing in Phrygian . Hopefully you’ve got a bit of a feel for this scale
and developed; or started to create; some of your own ideas, so now we’ll look at
what I played in the intro, which is split into 3 licks, the first being
Ok, quite a bit going on here It’s starting out purely Phrygian; leaning in to that b2nd
for more bite. The semi tone bend sees a hint at the blues scale, then I’ve just launched
into the blues scale, giving more shades from the minor pentatonic for the rest of the bar.
Bonus tip! For me, this is a key for the Phrygian blues, and this is purely personal taste,
but I really like to use it to add some spice over essentially very bluesy rock licks. If
I want more edge I’ll use the b2nd and b6th more, but I think the melodic qualities of
the minor pentatonic really help reign the scale in, so it doesn’t sound too out there!
Bar 2 starts with a Phrygian descent, only calling upon the blues note in that last group
of 16th notes, for a bit of hot sauce to round up the lick, ending on the root for added
stability. You can even mix in some Phrygian dominant; like Adrian Smith’s solo in Iron
maiden’s wicker man; lesson card in the top right; but I’m not delving in to that
particulate hybrid scale in this lesson!
Abandoning the bluesy vibes from the last lick this is very Phrygian; really hitting
it’s money note of b2nd and b6th. Root, b2nd, Root. 5th, b6th, 5th. Then- Root, b2nd,
root, but the octave higher. This is a simple theme, but really effective to get a sinister
semitone vibe going on. In bar 3, when I bring in the blues note; going 4th, blues note,
4th; I’m not using it in a bluesy way at all really, more for tension. Then I’m really
trying to milk this; remember repetition is powerful tool, abuse it as much as you can
get away with; bonus points if you got that reference, haha! But yeah, squeezing every
penny out of my theme, by going blues note (a b5th) to the 5th, then back to the blues
note for some real tension. Bonus tip! You could even go 5th to the b6th if you wanted
this lick and theme to go on longer. But at this point I wanted to wrap up the lick and
just came down; b2nd, Root, b6th, 5th. This time ending the lick on the 5th; you might
have guessed the final lick we’re going to lok at ends on the b3rd; I’ve done this
to help tie in to what I was saying before about resolving these licks to the chord tones
and to give a rough idea of how each feels. We’ve done a fairly bluesy lick, a pretty
Phrygian one, albeit with different shades of each through the licks, so the next area
I would suggest looking at is exotic sounds, maybe a bit like Marty Friedman; tutorial
card in the top right for more on his exotic scale usage.
Starting on the 5th, I’m really playing about with having a chromatic run from the
4th, blues note, 5th, b6th. So this bend hints at the b6th, pulling off to the 4th, sliding
to the blues note, then giving it a delayed bend up a semi tone to the 5th. bonus tip!
Here you could tap the 15th fret on the b string; keeping it bent for a more lilting
exotic sound. I opted to make life a bit easier for myself by playing the b3rd on the 11th
fret on the E string instead. The using the root and 2nd as a lead in, we have a fairly
“out” sounding string skip: 3brd, 2nd, Root, Blues note, 4th, b3rd and back up the
same way. I’m repeating this, then, squeezing 5 notes in to the space of 4 for a final flourish
before ending up on that b3rd. If you’re looking for more licks or something to bounce
off check out this solo trading video, where I pop up and do some leads over that same
backing. On a sort of side note, I tend to use this pentatonic shape as the basis for
a lot of lessons, partly because its well-known; most player will have a decent grasp of it
and it’s fairly intuitive, but please let me know if you’d prefer different boxes;
in fact I’ll put a poll up in the community bit, so please go and vote in that!
That was a quick introduction to the Phrygian blues scale, this has been Quick guitar tricks,
that’s the playlist there. For some more exotic lick check out this George Lynch Pro
Tips lesson and if you’ve enjoyed this, and want to stay up to date with the channel
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so inclined, cheers guys.