Major Pentatonic Scale

Penta means five, thus the pentatonic scale has five notes. In our first blues guitar lesson we discussed the major scale and numbered the notes 1 through 8, 1 and 8 being an octave. For the pentatonic scale were going to remove a couple of those notes, specifically the 4 and the 7. These five notes are the major pentatonic scale. If you play them in sequence you may hear a few songs coming out. The Temptations hit “My Girl” starts with this exact scale.

At this point we need to understand what makes a minor scale. In review, we learned that the major scale is made up of a sequence of whole steps and half steps. A whole step traverses two notes, a half step one. Playing the major scale in C on a piano we simply play all the white keys fron C to C. We also notice that there are no black keys in between the B and the C as well as the E and the F. Therefore, we deduce that the major scale, whose notes we have numbered 1 thru 8 is made up of five whole steps and two half steps. There is a black key in between the first and the second notes (whole step) as well as the second and third (whole step) however there is no black key  between the third and fourth or the seventh and eighth, these are half steps.

Minor Pentatonic Scale

Using the major scale as our frame of reference, if we move the 3rd, 6th, and 7th tones down (in tone, up the neck) a half step we get the natural minor scale. So, a natural minor scale would be 1, 2, flat3, 4, 5, flat6, flat7. To make it a minor pentatonic we get rid of the 2 and the flat6. NOW we’re playin’ some blues.

Playing either the major OR minor pentatonic scale over the blues chord progression works. Major and minor blues have distinct and different flavors which can be “messed” with by adding in other notes to the scales. As you experiment you will find that some work and some do not.

Adding in a flat5 while playing the minor pentatonic sounds good, a nice passing tone. Putting in a 3 (as opposed to a flat3) while playing the minor pentatonic works nicely too.

In reality, the blues scale, major or minor, is completely open to personal interpretation. Its the blues, just play.

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Blues Scale In E

One day this all changed. Granted, all those hours of pecking away had prepared me but, the revelation was instigated by a song I heard on the radio that had a classic blues ending. To this day I am still unclear as to what song it was however, it ended with a descending pentatonic scale. At this point I did realize that soloing was based on scales though I did not know any scales at the time. This song ended with the blues scale I was looking for… in sequential order for my convenience. The image to the right shows the notes of this scale. They are numbered to show the order in which the notes were heard.

So there I sat for 3 or 4 hours, playing these notes over and over and over… I think I was afraid I’d forget them. I had my scale. As I became more and more familiar with this sequence of notes I began to hear them in other songs. Not necessarily in the same order but rather I could recognize bits and pieces of it, everywhere. Roy Buchanan’s Green Onions was a great example for me of how these notes were used to make up an entire song. Pretty soon I realized that there really weren’t many songs that DIDN’T use these notes. Aside from the the blues, most of the rock music I liked was based on this scale. ZZ-Top was always one of my favorite bands, Billy Gibbons used this scale but would mix it up. Zeppelin and Skynyrd were masters of the riff, taking little segments of the scale then twisting and repeating them over and over. Six little notes, an infinite amount of possibilities.

I had been getting a little better with “my” blues scale, mixing it up and coping blues licks from Clapton, Page, Gibbons etc… However I didn’t really know anyone else who played guitar. That didn’t last long though. As my enthusiasm grew I began to talk about it more and more. Then one day in an English class I had to write an essay on a subject of my own choosing. I wrote about blues guitar… go figure.

Writing this essay was a life altering experience for two reasons. First, through my research for the essay I discovered the original blues masters, people like Robert Johnson, Albert King, Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and several others. I was amazed at the fact that all these people existed and I had never heard of them. It was a whole new world for me. The second reason was that after reciting the essay in front of the class I was approached by this scruffy kid who thought my report was great. He said that he too loved the blues and played guitar.

The best thing a musician can do to improve their playing is simply to play with other musicians. That scruffy kid I met after class that day became my best friend. He also introduced me to a few others, a bass player, a drummer, and a few other dudes who played guitar. As that year rolled along we all became a gang of sorts. We jammed all the time, and talked about nothing else but music. We would hang out in Johnnies basement every day after school. His parents didn’t mind and pretty much left us alone so we’d set up our stuff and jam.

We were not that good. We would pick a key and just go. On guitar, E is one of the easiest keys to play in because there are a lot of open strings that are in the key of E. A and G were good too but for some reason E was the favorite. We would play 12 bar blues in E for hours. Longer than any song should ever last. If there were other people there they would usually leave after 15 minutes of it but we never even noticed. We called it the endless blues guitar jam and as far as having a blues guitar lesson, nothing is better than playing with others.

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