Why The Blues Scale Sucks (For Blues)

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These bonus lessons have been created to supplement the material covered in the free YouTube lesson linked below. Please watch that first.

Today I’m explaining to you exactly why the blues scale… sucks! 

Ok, it doesn’t actually. In fact it’s a scale that has a lot of utility in genres like rock, country and blues. It’s also one of the scales taught in the first Bulletproof Guitar Player course. 

The point I’m making with my inflammatory video title is that despite having the genre in its name, the ‘blues scale’ is not the all-in-one solution to blues improvisation that its name might imply.

One of the reasons why is that it does not contain a major 3rd. Why is that a problem? Well, blues progressions (excluding minor blues) are commonly played with dominant 7th (or major) chords.

If you know anything about dominant 7th chords (R 3 5 b7), you’ll know that a major 3rd is one of the strongest chord tones in that chord type - so soloing with a scale that doesn’t have one means you’re leaving a tasty note choice on the table.

And that isn’t exclusive to the I chord either, the blues scale (built from the root of the I chord) also doesn’t contain major 3rd’s of the IV and V chords either.

Nor does it contain a couple of other notes that can be used to great effect over the I chord, like major 2nd’s and 6th’s. 

To give you more ideas to play around with, the bonus material for this YouTube video includes SIX bonus lick lessons!

2x for the I chord, 2x for the I - IV chord transition and 2x for the turnaround.