Hi. How are you doing ? Justin here ! Welcome to IM143
in which we're gonna be checking out the Blues scale, and a blues hybrid scale.
You'll notice that I'm playing an electric guitar for this,
you don't have to play an electric guitar,
just I think a lot of Blues Lead Guitar sounds cooler on an electric guitar
but if you're playing an acoustic, it'll work just as good, so don't worry about it.
The scale that we're gonna be playing, as I mentioned is the Blues Scale,
which is essentially the same as the Minor Pentatonic Scale,
but it adds one note which is the the flattened 5th scale degree,
also referred to as the Blue note.
Funnily enough that's why it's called the Blues scale.
So let's get to a close up, and check out this new scale.
We're starting here at the 5th fret with our first finger,
and we're starting exactly the same as we did for an A minor pentatonic scale.
So we're playing 1st finger
then 4th finger in the 8th fret,
then 1st finger in the 5th fret of the 5th string,
but then we add here this extra note with the 2nd finger,
in the 6th fret of the 5th string,
followed by the 3rd finger in the 7th fret of the 5th string.
So, whereas the regular minor pentatonic just went 1, 4, 1, 3
the Blues scale goes 1, 4, 1, 2, 3,
Let's continue, it goes 1, 3,
exactly the same as the Minor Pentatonic did,
then 1,3, exactly the same as the Minor Pentatonic did
but then we add little finger on the 8th fret of the 3rd string.
Then we continue the rest of the Minor Pentatonic,
exactly the same as we always did.
Back down, those two strings are the same but then
3rd string, 8th fret with the little finger,
3rd finger, 1st finger, 3,1, then here we go, 3
there's the Blue note again, 1,4,1.
Let me just play it once up and down for you to have a listen to,
and then we'll go and play it real slowly together
. . .
OK let's play it really evenly together, here we go just one note per beat 3, 4
. . .
You'll find when you improvise with this scale that this note, the 'Blue' note,
adds an awful lot of tension, so it tends to sound funny if you stop on it.
If you go
. . .
it tends to sound a little bit strange, so very often you'll pass through the note.
. . .
This next scale we're gonna check out is called a 'Hybrid' scale,
and what I mean by that is it's not really a proper scale.
It's just a group of notes that I discovered sound really cool together.
When I was transcribing a lot of the early blues masters
I kept finding that they used the same notes all the time,
and even though it wasn't actually a proper scale I could find in any books,
it sounded really good and I guess those guys weren't schooled,
and they didn't know if it was a proper scale or not
and what they were after was what sounded good.
And actually that's the most important thing.
And it's a really good fun scale for learning to improvise with.
Especially you can do some really cool little string bending tricks,
which I'm going to show you in the next lesson,
so, let's check out this 'Blues Hybrid Scale'.
The Blues Hybrid Scale is exactly the same as the Blues Scale
only we're adding in two notes at the 7th fret on the thinnest two strings.
So we're start off exactly the same as before, I'm gonna be calling the finger numbers.
We know that we're starting in the 5th fret here. It's going 1st finger, 4th finger
1, 2, 3, 1, 3, then 1, 3, 4,
which was so far exactly the same as the Blues Scale,
but now we add 1, 3, 4, 1, 3, 4, on the thinnest two strings.
. . .
Going down now we're gonna have 4, 3, 1, 4, 3, 1, 4, 3, 1, 3, 1, 3, 2, 1, 4, 1.
Of course this is pretty cool now,
having the same pattern on the thinnest three strings.
. . .
Lots of cool little phrases that you can get now with the extra added notes.
You don't even have to use these ones with the little finger, you could
. . .
Especially in the next lesson we're gonna be learning these little semitone bends.
. . .
Which suddenly make things sound really cool.
So this is a really fun scale to have a bit of a play about with.
The most important thing you can do now is to start using these scales.
As soon as you put them into practice
and actually start hearing the effect of the cool Flat 5 note,
hearing the spice that it adds to your blues playing, the better.
There's no substitute for it.
The same with the new Hybrid Blues Scale.
Just start playing it, experiment, use the Blues backing track,
and try out some of the improvising
you were doing before with the Minor Pentatonic,
but just try using those additional notes and see what happens.
In the next lesson, we're going to be checking out some bending
which you'll find adds a whole new dimension to your Blues playing as well,
but it's a great idea if, first of all,
you can just get those scales under your fingers,
so you know what notes you're gonna bend and what notes you aren't.
So have good fun with that,
and I'll see you for another lesson very soon.
Take care, bye bye.