Blues
This scale is also known by other names: Minor Blues.
3 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 3 - 2About Blues
The G blues scale is G, B♭, C, D♭, D and F — the G minor pentatonic with the flat fifth added. It sits at the third fret, one of the most comfortable positions on the neck, which makes it the shape many players use for practising the idiom even when the song is in another key.
The notes
G B♭ C D♭ D F, then G. The D♭ is the blue note, and it lives between the fourth and fifth degrees. Played as a passing note it colours the line; held, it sounds wrong, which is the point.
The scale contains B♭ against a G7 chord that contains B natural. That clash is not an error — the friction between the minor third of the scale and the major third of the chord is the sound of blues itself.
On the fretboard
The third-fret box with the root on the low E string is standard, and it overlaps with the open position enough that phrases can drop into open strings for contrast.
One fret below sits the F blues scale and two frets above the A — the same shape, moved. Learning the box once gives every key, which is why blues improvisation scales so easily.
Where it is used
Over a twelve-bar in G, and over rock riffs in the same key. It is also the scale most guitar teachers start improvisation with, because the third fret is easy and the shape forgives mistakes.
In jazz it is used sparingly, as a colour rather than a basis — a phrase from the blues scale dropped into a bebop line is a deliberate roughening.
Related Scales from Blues
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