Blues Scales for the Piano

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Omri and today we are going to talk about the Blues scales. When we learn Classical music we talk about major scales and minor scales predominantly. When we play Blues and Jazz and some Rock and Roll styles we play with mostly Blues scales which have a different sound quality to them and reflect the historical development of those styles. Typically, in Blues and Jazz we are going to play different chords in different intervals and emphasize different sounds and so the scale that has developed around those styles is slightly different. When we play a normal scale, meaning a major or minor scale we are going to play seven notes and then repeat the top for an eight note Octave. When we play a Blues scale we play six unique notes and repeat the base note at the top for a seven note scale. What I played just now is the C Minor Blues scale and it has a lot of dissonant sounds in it. The intervals are very different from Major and Minor scales where the intervals are either a whole step or half step away from each other. In Blues scales the intervals between the notes of the scale can be greater than a half step or a whole step. In the same way that C Major and Minor scales or rather regular Major and Minor scales are related to each other by being relative to each other so a C Major scale has the same notes as an A Minor scale because it is three half steps down. One, two, three down the same way the Blues scales are related to each other. So if I play a C Major Blues scale and I go down three half steps and I play the same exact notes I’m going to have the A Minor Blues scale. Let’s hear the difference one more time. The Major Blues scale, the Minor Blues scale. Now just as with any type of improvisation when we are playing and improvising we are playing mostly notes that come from the scale. Some popular melodies that we know just play the Blues scale as it is. For example, this popular melody just plays a bite more or less down the Blues scale. So if you want to improvise and you know the Blues scales you can make a lot of different combinations just from that knowledge of those six unique keys."