Suffer no longer.
If you’ve been playing guitar for sometime, and don’t know these simple blues scales, I advise that you get stuck into them straight away. I’ve done the basic blues scales in five keys: C , G, D, A, and E. The fingers I’ve used are on one of many possibilities. If you are new to my site and have played blues scales before, you’ll notice I’ve used some unusual fingerings, this IS intentional. As a rule guitarists get lazy and sit and meander through scales, running fingers up and down the neck with out too much thought, that way of doing things has little to do with music and a lot to do with mechanics…I can’t stand it. These fingers are designed to make you think and feel the notes. Avoid playing like a robot. you’ll notice that the D scale is moveable, it’s more in the traditional way of playing scales and if you aren’t careful you may find yourself not thinking too much about this one.
Concentrate, turn of the television, listen to the texture of the notes. I particularly like the use of open notes in scales, they are tremendous on acoustic guitar.
Click the blue link for the Printable Version of essential blues scales for guitar
For Country Blues Scales that are usable over thousands of songs go to:
http://acousticguitarist.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/country-guitar-scales-for-acoustic-guitar/
13 Comments
July 8, 2008 at 12:37 am
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July 11, 2008 at 6:01 am
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August 25, 2008 at 1:11 am
Looks like the link to the PDF is missing. Thanks!
August 25, 2008 at 4:35 am
Thanks Rick for pointing this out, currently there seems to be an issue with uploading the pdf’s to wordpress, have never experienced that before. Will fix ASAP
Tony
August 25, 2008 at 4:41 am
Rick Thanks again
Have fixed by hosting at another site.
Cheers Tony
August 26, 2008 at 5:39 am
Great! This page is helpful to work on other keys and forms of the Pentatonic Blues. I’m a beginner but see your point about getting stuck in the box of the scale. I’ve been putting in practice time to learn the G Blues scale forms. Brad Davis’ site for his book, Flatpicking the Blues, has some good exercises that I’ve been working.
It would be helpful if you could give an example of free-forming in a blues scale.
Rick
September 1, 2008 at 10:27 am
Thanks for the practical feedback Rick.
I will be putting al sorts of resources together. I assume what you call free-forming is what I’ve called improvisation for almost 40 years.
I think a great place to come from is to hum or sing a part and then work out how to play it. A lot of guys just run their hands up and down the fretboard playing the right notes, this for me is not such a great approach. The idea is to get the sounds into your head and learn how to play them. I developed a very strong melodic approach by learning to play the melodies of numerous songs and then learn how to build around the melody. The bluegrass players are very good at this, and this is a great style for developing fluency, second only to classical Indian music. The training in Indian music is much more rigorous than any other style, wheras the bluegrass is very relaxed…. but darn fast
T
December 24, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Hey Tony My name is Joe and i just found your web site and i think its great it really helped me out with playing the irish washer women im a beginner on the guitar and with your web site i learned pretty qiuck how to play it with what i learned on the web site well thanks and merry christmas and a happy new year
December 24, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Joe
That’s great. It’s amazing how fast we learn when we are keen. The Irish tunes are great to develop speed and fluency. Try Soldiers Joy and Rights of Man, I might post an arrangement at some point as well.
You might also like to check out my other site. Similar with different content.
http://the-guitarplayer.com/
Tony and Merry Christmas
February 3, 2009 at 2:59 am
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February 17, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Finally some quality FREE guitar content on the web! This site is helpful thanks for sharing, great stuff.
September 11, 2009 at 2:03 am
What are the notes on a guitar ? like A B G E F ?
September 14, 2009 at 8:10 am
The guitar uses the same as every other instrument. Standard notes plus sharps and flats. From the bass string to the high strings are listed below.
E string: E, F , F sharp, G, G sharp, A ( and keep going up the string or
A string: A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp,
D string: D , D sharp, E , F, F sharp,
G string: G , G sharp, A, A sharp,
B string: B, C, C sharp, D, D sharp,
E string: E, F , F sharp, G, G sharp, A and continues
Take a close look at the pattern.
Also, the sharp notes will have equivalent flats, depending on the application and key