Blues Scales on Keyboard for a Church Band

Video Transcript

"TOM SMITH: Hi. This is Tom. This is for ExpertVillage.com. We're talking about how to play keyboards in a worship team at a church. One thing that could help with keyboard leads on some songs is to learn a blues scale. It never hurts to have that handy because it's an easy way to improvise if you need to using--I don't know--an organ sound or a piano sound or what have you. A simple blues scale--and let's do it in the key of F. So, my regular scale for F is just F, G, A, B flat, C, D, E, F. Now, my blues scale for F, I'm going to go from F, I'm not going to play the G. I'm going to play like an--I'm playing that second note a semitone higher, okay? So, the second is played--the second note in the scale is played a semitone higher. So, I go from F to A flat and then I'm going to jump to the B flat and then I'm going to add in a B natural, okay? So, I'm going to add in this B natural and then I play C which is in the scale of F. Then I'm going to jump to a flattened 7, so instead of playing an E, I'm going to play an E flat and an F. So, a nice simple blues scale would go from F, A flat, D flat, D, C, E flat, F. So, the same intervals, try that in the common keys that you use like in the key of C, the key of G, key of F for starters, D, so that you can play it comfortably. And then practice it going back and forth so like--try two octaves. And then what you can do is use variations of those notes to play a lead. It's just a handy scale to use and it works off well with a lot of the choruses that are used today."