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Chapter 8: Playing Lead: Soaring Melodies and Searing Solos
Pentatonic Plus One: The Six-Note
Blues Scale
The pentatonic scale is a wonderful invention — and can save you from
sounding bad as a blues player. On the flip side, because the scale plays it
safe, so to speak, it can lack a little color or teeth. If you want to add some
blues bite and grit to the pentatonic scale and make it more blues-like, follow
a simple process: Just add one note. Then your five-note scale becomes a sixnote
scale that’s tailor-made to bring out the edge in blues. And it’s appropriately
called the blues scale.
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You can transform the five-note minor pentatonic scale into the six-note
blues scale by throwing in the interval of a %5 — B% in the key of E minor.
Figure 8-8 shows the notes and pattern of the E blues scale. Play through the
scale slowly from the bottom to the top and then from the top to the bottom,
playing one note at a time. Pay attention to where the added B% comes in. It
occurs twice in this pattern — once on the fifth string and once on the third
string, an octave apart. Notice how it reeks (in a good way) with blues flavor!
= added note: B
Figure 8-8:
The E blues
scale.
Thousands of songs use the blues scale, both in their composed melodies
and in their improvised solos. Some famous rock songs, like Cream’s
“Sunshine of Your Love” and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” use the
blues scale as the main riff of the song — and exploit that %5 interval. Figure
8-9 may not be as immortal as “Smoke on the Water,” but it uses the blues
scale as a melodic solo over a 12-bar blues in E.
TEAM LinG