Blues Scales For Guitar - Learning To Use Them
In this lesson we’ll take a look at learning to use blues scales for guitar. We’ll take both the Minor Blues scale and Major Blues scale and look at a way of learning to use them. But before we get started…do you know these two scales?
If you are new to blues scales for guitar, then I highly recommend that you go through the following guitar lessons first. Once you’ve done that, I’ll meet you back here…
How did it go? I hope you learnt something from them. 
Right. So where can we use blues scales? For this lesson, we’ll take a look at a really common use of blues scales…
Soloing over dominant seventh chords!
A great place to learn how to use blues scales is to solo over dominant seventh chords which have the same root note as the scales. This may seem a complicated statement, so let’s make it 100% clear with an example…
Over an A dominant seventh chord (A7) you can use the following two blues scales…
- A Major Blues scale
- A Minor Blues scale
And another example…
Over a C dominant seventh chord (C7) you can use these blues guitar scales…
- C Major Blues scale
- C Minor Blues scale
Get the idea? Cool! Let’s put this theory into practice. Please check out the following chord…
A Dominant Seventh (A7):
I’m pretty sure you’ve come across this chord before. If you haven’t, then make sure you memorize it now.
So what do we do now? This is what I recommend…
- Record yourself strumming the above chord. Feel free to use any strumming pattern that you want. If you don’t have any means of recording, then get together with a friend and get them to strum the chord.
- Solo over the recording of the chord. Remember that you can use these scales…
- A Major Blues scale
- A Minor Blues scale
- Notice how each scale sounds. This is really important. Pay attention to the “flavor” that each scale has over the A7 chord. They both sound cool, but they DO each have their own personality. This step will allow you to memorize their personalities.
Pretty simple huh? Obviously there are lots of other ways of learning to use blues scales for guitar. But I feel the method we have talked about in this lesson is a great place to start. Enjoy!
If you would really like to advance your guitar scales knowledge and ability, then I invite you to check out the Guitar Scale Mastery membership website. If you want to improve your guitar soloing and are serious about mastering scales, then I feel it could help you a lot.
