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Major Blues: The Other Blues Scale
As anyone who has taken guitar lessons, bought a book on Blues Guitar or Guitar Scales, can attest, the Minor Blues Scale is one of the most fundamental and widely taught-learned scale on the guitar.
Though this scale is a great start when learning how to improvise in a Blues-Rock style, many players hit a wall once they’ll worked out all the fingerings and start to wonder where to go next in their practicing.
While it may be lessor known than its Minor cousin, the Major Blues Scale is a great next step when looking to expand your knowledge of scales, learn the fretboard and raise the level of your improvisational chops.
Before we dive into learning the Major Blues Scale on the guitar, let’s take a look at how this scale compares to the Minor Blues Scale.
Notice that both of these scales have Roots and 5ths, but otherwise they are built with different intervals.
I’ve used the upper extension number, 9-11-13, in this example so as to make it easier to compare to the arpeggios further on in the lesson.
If you find this confusing, just think of the 9 as the 2, the 11 and the 4 and the 13 as the six, so this scale could also be written as R-2-b3-3-5-6-R.
Major Blues Scale Compared to Minor Blues Scale
We’ll now look at how the Major Blues Scale relates to the Major 6th and Dominant 13th Arpeggios.
Here we can see that the Major Blues Scale has a lot in common with both of these musical forms, and that it is more closely related to each of these Arpeggios note-wise than it is the Minor Blues Scale.
Major Blues Compared to Major 6th and 13th Arpeggios
With a little theory under our belts we’re ready to learn the Major Blues Scale on the guitar. The following example lays out the 5 standard fingerings for this scale.
If you are looking to venture further, you can check out my page on Major Blues Scale Fingerings, which delves into some more unconventional, but very cool, fingerings for the Major Blues Scale.
If you already know all of your 5 standard fingerings for the Minor Blues Scale, you’ll notice that these shapes are identical to those of its minor cousin. But, there is one main difference. These scales seem to have shifted over by one shape.
For example, the second Minor Blues shape is the same as the first Major Blues shape, the third Minor Blues shape is the same as the third Minor Blues shape and so forth.
This little bit of knowledge can help you learn all 5 Major Blues Shapes very quickly if you already know your Minor Blues scale shapes, and vice-versa.
Major Blues Fingerings for Guitar
Page 2
While learning the shapes for the Major Blues scales across the neck, and in all of the 12 keys, is cool, it’s a lot more fun to start making music with this new sound. Here are a few Major Blues Scale licks to get you started.
After you’ve learned these, and can apply them to your soloing on a Blues song, try to come up with some of your own. If you haven’t done this before you can start by mixing and matching from different sections of these licks.
Maybe take the first bar of lick one, then the second bar of lick two and the third bar of lick three to come up with a new lick to call your own. The possibilities are endless.
Major Blues Riffs for Guitar
One of the main differences between the Major and Minor Blues Scales, besides their interval structure, is how they are used when you begin to solo with them.
The Minor Blues Scale can be used over any chord in a Blues chord progression, BUT, the Major Blues Scale can only be used with the chord that shares its root.
For example, if you want to solo over an A7 chord, you use A Major Blues. If you want to solo over D7, you use D Major Blues, and if you want to solo over E7, you use E Major Blues.
See how this works?
It’s a little tricky so go slow when first learning this approach to improvising.
Try just playing over A7 for a while, then D7 for a while, and then mixing the two together, then just E7, and maybe D7 and E7 together, then A7 and E7 together, then all three.
Here’s a little cheat sheet to help you get started in applying the Major Blues Scale to a Blues tune. Notice how each new chord gets a new scale. Like jazz guitarist Joe Pass used to say, “When the chord changes, you change.”
Major Blues Scale for A Blues
To finish things off, I’ve written out a short, one chorus Blues solo in the key of A using the riffs from the previous examples. Notice how with each new chord change I use a different Major Blues Scale.
After you’ve worked through this solo, try writing one out of your own, then dig in and start creating your own Blues solos on the spot using your newfound knowledge of the Major Blues sound.
Sample Solo With Major Blues Scales
Do you have a favorite way to practice or apply the Major Blues Scale to your playing? If so, please share it in the comments section below.
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13 Responses to "Major Blues: The Other Blues Scale"
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Was wondering if you can put some audio files with your examples?
Thx for the great site
ken
Ken: I’m planning on doing videos for the lessons on the site in the future, hopefully later this summer when my schedule permits. Thanks!
Hi Matt,
That would be great, then we can really see how to use these!
Ken
hi;the scale has a lot of different emotions from the minor pentatonic or minor blues
For sure, same relative shape on the guitar, a lot of the same sounds but a much different feel and overall tonal quality. Definitely a sound worth working on in the practice room!
Hello Matt!
Just what the Dr. ordered! in listening to Wes what scales is he useing between the I, IV, V, . major/ minor scales that you gave us. Thank you so very much for all that you share with we students of Jazz Guitar.
Frederick
Thanks Frederick,
Wes liked to use the Bebop Scale a lot in his playing, you can find fingerings for those scales here:
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/guitar-resources/scales/bebop-scale
He would also add in tons of patterns like the ones in this article:
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/bebop-scale-patterns-for-guitar
Especially enclosures like the ones you can find here:
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/bulding-bebop-vocabulary-enclosures
But Wes also moved beyond scales and used a ton of arpeggios in his playing, adding in extra chromatic notes like in this article;
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/instant-bebop-adding-chromatics-to-basic-arpeggios
You can also check out how Wes thought about chord scales in his soling in this article:
http://www.mattwarnockguitar.com/jazz-guitar-chords-wes-montgomery-chord-scales
Hope that helps!
Matthew
Helps? You have just opened doors that only a month or so ago I was stuck in an improvising funk. Thank you for sharing!
Frederick
Cool, glad the articles were helpful Frederick!
Thanks for your great information, which I appreciate. However, there is an error on the tone numbers in the major blues scale of the first chart — you have an 11 underneath what is really the 5 (common to both major and minor as you stated just before the chart).
I’m also wondering about the wisdom in using the extension numbers 9, 11, and 13 in the first octave. Without a 7 they are sort of meaningless and it seems unnecessary when representing a scale’s essence. Plus I have never seen the tones listed that way, but rather in the typical straightforward way (Maj Blues: R, 2, b3, 3, 5, 6, R; Min Blues: R, b3, 4, b5, 5, b7, R). Something to think about.
Hey Blaine,
Thanks for the heads up, missed those 5′s, i fixed the typos.
I like to use 9,11 and 13 for the upper extensions in this case because I am comparing the scale to the 13th arpeggio, so it allows you to see both with the same numbers for each note. It would have been confusing for some people if I said 1 3 4 5 6 for the scale and 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 for the corresponding arpeggio that’s all.
I usually use 12345 for scales and 13579 etc for arpeggios and chords, but since I was comparing them both here I kept it to one system to make it simple.
Yes, but ironically those higher numbers in the first octave may put-off some newbies and achieve the opposite of your intent to simplify. You might use parenthesis like you did for the A6 arpeggio. So, 2(9), 4(11), 6(13), although this might look too busy.
Maybe better, just use 2, 4, and 6 in the first octave always, and just add a line explaining extension equivalents before after you introduce the A6 and A13 arpeggios…such as “Note, in the second octave, 2′s are 9′s, 4′s are 11′s, and 6′s are 13′s.” That combined with the parenthesis notation on the A6 arpeggio and everyone will understand. It might even be worth it to have a post explaining the 7 extensions (if you don’t already) that you can link to right then.
This is such a foundational study for getting people out of the ultra-common “minor blues rut” that it would be a shame to lose people on the first chart.
i get what you’re saying, I added in a sentence before the first example explaining what I did and why, that should help clear up an further confusion.