How to Play the Blues Scale in Jazz Guitar

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I am a professional guitar instructor and today we are going to be studying beginning jazz guitar. Another scale related to that pentatonic scale is a 6 note scale referred to as the blues scale. Now how the blues scale is created is by adding the flatted 5th note of a major scale to the 5 note pentatonic scale. So here's my 5 note pentatonic scale; A, C, D, E and G. Now let's go to a A major scale; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That note the flatted 5th note and its octave which in this case happens to be an E flat. When added to that pentatonic scale will create a 6th note scale that we commonly come to known as the blues scale. Here it is: And it just kind of sounds a little jazzier but you will find that scale used in songs by heavy metal artists such as Metallica all the time. It's a great scale for jazz soloing, blue soloing and rock soloing and it just kind of snazzes things up a little bit. For example I'll go. "