Essential Blues And Rock Scales

There so many scales out there that at times it seems that learning them can be confusing. Often many new guitarists don’t know were to start. The good news is that you do not have to learn every scale you only have to learn the scales that apply to your chosen genre of music. It is also a good idea to learn the scales in the keys that you most often play in first. My advice is to learn the following scales first, and in the following order, the minor pentatonic scale, the major pentatonic scale, and the blues scale, because they are the scales that are the most widely used in blues guitar, rock, jazz, bluegrass and country music. In reality these are the three scales that you hear more often then any others when you listen to the radio. The most crucial keys to learn to play these scales in are as follows A, D, E,  and G. In order to become a skilled guitarist you will have to learn to play these scales in all the keys, but if you are just beginning to play the guitar the keys of A, D, E, and G are a good place to start. In this article we will concentrate on the key of A, because it sits nicely in the center of the fretboard. 1. The minor pentatonic scale The minor pentatonic scale like all other pentatonic scales is made up of five notes the root note, flattened third, fourth, fifth and flattened seventh. In the key of A the minor pentatonic scale contains the following notes A - C - D - E – G. This is one of the more important scales that you should learn. Just about every guitarists has put this scale to good use in one form or another, some guitarist include Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and many others. Minor pentatonic scales work best if a song is... A.) In a minor key… B.) In a major key with a blues feel to it…

2. The major pentatonic scale

Slide Guitar For Beginners

I’m not really an expert on slide guitar, so the following stuff is just for beginners. Slide guitar is an essential part of the Blues, I had to start with it. Duane Allman’s playing on “Layla and other assorted love songs” just blew me away, the same did EC unplugged. More than any other guitar technique it depends on the right feeling. The basics can be learned within a day, but to master it you need a long time.

Most slide guitar instructions start like “and now we use the open xyz tuning”. That means you can forget what you know about the fretboard and forget both your left and right hand techniques. You have to learn everything new. To avoid this, I’ll first explain slide guitar on standard tuning, so all you need is a slide. Open tunings (see below) give a different sound and have their advantages, but they are not better in every case. The late Muddy Waters for example played in standard tuning, also Duane and EC on some songs. Open tuning is often used for Delta Blues on acoustic guitars, because you need the bass strings in correct tuning. For soloing on electric guitars it’s not that important, so you can play in standard tuning. However, you have to damp some strings, which is usually done with the picking hand. That’s why most slide players prefer fingerstyle. Damping is more important in standard tuning, because you get dissonant intervals when the strings with all their overtones ring out.

The Guitar

You can use both acoustic and electric guitars, as long as they don’t have nylon strings. If you want to play much slide guitar, prepare a guitar just for this job. That means using heavier strings (no “super slinky”…) and a high action (distance of the strings to the fretboard). If you have an extra guitar only for slide, you can also try out the open tunings. If you have only one and play sometimes slide or want to switch between slide and normal playing, use the standard tuning.
Resonator guitars (i.e. a Dobro) are great for acoustic slide guitar, they give a loud, metallic “Delta Blues” tone due to the metal cones build in.

The advantage of slide guitar is that you can play it on old guitars with worn-out fretboards or even cheap guitars with bad adjusted frets. You don’t need the frets!