Learning Lead Guitar Blues Scale

This is the most commonly used fingering for the blues scale. Learn it well. You will find many uses for it in your guitar playing journey.

Important points on learning blues lead guitar

Notice that this diagram of the blues scale has no open strings. This means you can play it any-where on the guitar. The fret does not matter. Just make sure you keep the spacing between your fingers the same as you move the scale around the neck.

When you move to a different fret, you are changing the key. Don’t worry if you don’t know what this means, more on this later.

When reading this diagram of the blues scale, start on the left hand side of the diagram.

This is the low E string (6th string). Play all of the notes on this string from top to bottom before moving on to the next string. In this example you would play 2 notes on the 6th string. The 1st finger followed by the 4th finger.

On the 5th string you would play 1st finger followed by the 2nd finger and then the third finger. The 4th string would be 1st finger and 3rd finger again. Continue in this manner until you play the entire blues scale.

When you arrive at the end of the scale, turn around and go back down the scale. In reverse, you would start on the 1st string and play 4th finger followed by the 1st finger.

The 2nd string would also be 4th finger, 1st finger. The 3rd string would be 4th finger, 3rd- finger, 1st finger. Continue on until you complete the entire pentatonic scale.

The note in red is the tonic. This note determines what key the scale is in. The following chart shows the names of the notes along the 6th string. It should be memorized.

Notes on the 6th string of the guitar

This chart shows the names of the notes on the 6th string up to the 11th fret. When you get to the 12th fret it starts all over again at E. So the note at the 12th fret, 6th string is E, the 13th fret is F, etc.

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Notice that this scale started on the 5th fret. Looking at the chart above you can see that the note at the 5th fret is an A, so this is an A blues scale.

You would use this to solo over A blues in the key of A. Big surprise huh! You see, it’s actually quite simple. You just use the blues scale that matches the key of the song you are playing and away you go.

Your goal for now is simply to memorize the blues scale. As with all things in music, go slowly.

Use a metronome when you practice and get plenty of repetitions.

If you were to play the blues scale 20 times a day, 5 days a week for one month, that would be

400 repetitions in a month. It doesn’t take a lot of time to do this, and it’s this kind of practice that will help you learn guitar in the shortest time possible.

Do the repetitions and I promise it will be worth it. When you start to get command over the tools of music like the blues scale, your enjoyment of playing will increase many times over.

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