Guitar Scales and Chords: Groove and Improvise the Blues

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Have you ever wanted to play like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan or BB King, then you're right where you need to be. I'm Wes Singerman, and I'm a music producer and guitarist. My career has led me to work and play alongside artists such as Kehlani, Travis Barker, Kendrick Lamar, Party Favor, Carly Rae Jepsen, and so many others. In today's class, we're going to be learning the basics of playing blues. We'll start with learning some finger exercises to strengthen our finger muscles and get us ready to solo. Then we'll be learning about minor pentatonic scales and some different positions that we can play on the guitar neck and then finally, we're going to learn the blues and try soloing over it using the pentatonic scale. The only thing you're going to need for this class is your guitar, but if you want to use an app or any effects like overdrive and distortion, that's great. By the end of this class, you'll be able to Gemma on a blues and develop the building blocks of becoming a full-on shredder. Let's get started. 2. Getting Started: [MUSIC] In this class, we're going to be talking about different ways that we can strengthen our fingers using finger exercises so that we can shred. Then we'll learn the pentatonic scale, which is the primary scale used for blues and rock solos, as well as some world music. All you truly need is your guitar. But I would recommend grabbing an app and a quarter-inch cable as well, so we can really blues. Let's go. 3. Strengthening Your Fingers: [MUSIC] Just like an athlete needs to strengthen their muscles to improve their performance, so do we when we play an instrument. Guitar involves a lot of moves that your hands are not used to, and a lot of parts of your fingers that have never been exercised before. We need to learn how to strengthen them with finger exercises. To start, we're going to be focusing on using your first, second, third, and fourth fingers, playing the first, second, third, and fourth frets of the high E string. With your right hand, make sure you focus on alternating your pick down, up. We're going to start with the high E string. We're going to play down, up [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3, 4. After we go from this string, we're going to go down to the next one. Then continue all the way down. Make sure that you're focusing the right hand down, up. Now when we reach this last string with our pinky, we're going to slide up, one fret and we're going to reverse the entire pattern. We're going to go backwards 4, 3, 2, 1 with our fingers and we're going to go back up the strings now. Still focusing on your alternate picking down, up and we're going to start here. [MUSIC] Moving back up the strings, going backwards, [MUSIC] now when we reached the high E string again, we're going to slide our first finger up, one fret to the third fret, and we're going to still continue the exact same pattern, but going forwards again. Now, 1, 2, 3, 4, and as you get comfortable with this, we can build some speed with it. If you feel comfortable go as fast as you can. But it has to be consistent. The reverse is to be the same speed as going forward, and if we want we can start taking this all the way up the neck and if we want, we can go all the way up the neck, all the way back down the neck. With these exact same exercises. You're picking should be very even and consistent. We don't want to go faster when we're going forwards than we do backwards. Whatever your slowest speed is, we got to go that speed, and as you build, we're going to get better at doing this, and you can just go faster altogether. This is about coordinating your hands together and it's about strengthening your left-hand muscles. Be aware that just as going to the gym doesn't necessarily make you a good at playing sports. This exercise is not going to make you any better at actually playing solos. We're just teaching our fingers how to move and coordinating our hands to work together. Later in this class, we're going to work on playing through real skills, and then a blues. 4. Trying Alternate Finger Exercises: [MUSIC] Now that you've learned the basic exercise, I wanted to show you some different things that you could do to keep it fresh for your fingers and more challenging for the people who are already treading through the original exercise. The first thing I like to do is change the order of our fingers. We started by going 1, 2, 3, 4 and then we reverse the pattern by going 4, 3, 2, 1. Why don't we try a different finger combo instead? How about 1, 3, 2, 4? [MUSIC] And then we can move this down to the next string, [MUSIC] and continue that pattern going all the way down to the low E. After we get to the very low E string, we can slide our pinky up and we're going to reverse the pattern. Instead of 1, 3, 2, 4, we're now going, 4, 2, 3, 1. Again focusing on your alternate picking, trying to coordinate your fingers, and then we're going to move it up, and go all the way back to the high E string. When we're here, we're going to slide our first finger up and continue again. 1, 3, 2, 4. Again, we can start to build some speed from this, and we can continue all the way up and down the neck. You may have noticed that this is already much harder than the original exercise of just going 1, 2, 3, 4. There are so many combinations that we can choose from. My recommendation is to pick out one of these combos while you warm up your fingers and practice this up and down the neck. It should take you no longer than 15 minutes and I wouldn't recommend practicing it for more time than that. Add this to your daily routine and join me in the next lesson. 5. Skipping Strings As Finger Exercise: [MUSIC] Not only can we change up the finger combinations we're using as we demoed in the last lesson, but we can also change up the string combinations. Originally we started on the high E string and just worked our way down one at a time, going all the way to the low E, and then we reversed it. But instead of going first string, second string, third string fourth string all the way down, why don't we change it up a little bit? How about skipping strings? We'll start off with the high E string, [MUSIC] and this time we're going to skip down to the G string, [MUSIC] then back up to the B string [MUSIC] and then skip down to the D string, [MUSIC] back up to the G string, down to the A string. [MUSIC] Now things are getting a little more complicated. As we go here, we're going to slide up again and now reverse the pattern but keeping in mind that we have to reverse the string pattern as well. We're going to start on the sixth string, skip up to the fourth string, then down to the fifth string, up to the third string, and so on. [MUSIC] Now when we get back here, we're going to slide up and continue the pattern again. [MUSIC] When you start feeling comfortable you can build some speed. Again, never forget about the alternate picking. [MUSIC] We can also try some trickier patterns, like going from the first string all the way down to the sixth string and then coming back up to the second string, fifth string, third string, and fourth string. Then from here we slide up and reverse the patterns so we go fourth string, third string, fifth string, second string, sixth string, first string. There are tons of combos that you can start to unlock between changing your strings and your finger combinations, the possibilities are endless. As a reminder, this is an exercise, so spending a ton of time doing only this is not recommended, pick a new combo to practice each day you pick up the instrument. 6. Mastering the Minor Pentatonic Scale: [MUSIC] The pentatonic scale is one of the most used scales in all of music, and it's the main scale that we use in blues and rock music for soloing. It's super versatile and has uses in every style of music. We call it pentatonic because penta here means five and tonic in music is our root node or home-base. It's a scale that has five notes per octave. We're going to be learning the minor pentatonic scale today in the key of A. I'm going to start with my first finger on the fifth fret of the low E string. This note is A, this is going to be our root node. We're going to start here then we're going to play with our pinky the eighth fret, and we're going to move to the next string with our first finger play the fifth fret of the A string. Then seventh fret with our third finger. Move up the string again, we're going to play the fifth fret, and then with our third finger again, play the seventh fret. Right here, this is also an A. We started off on A, we had five nodes and then we're back to A again. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and now back to A again. We're going to move to the next string. Fifth fret of the G string, seventh fret of the G string as well. Move again up. Fifth fret of the B string with our peaky play the eighth fret of the B string, and then we have an A again on the fifth fret of the high E string. We're going to add one more note here on the eighth fret of the high E string, and this is our scale. Going backwards, just like we were focusing on alternating or pick for the finger exercises, we're going to do the exact same thing here when we practice playing up and down this scale. We're going to start on the low string and we're going to go down, up, down, up, down, up with our right hand. Then when we come back, same exact thing. Down, up, down, up, down, up, down up, down, up, down, up. You can already hear some familiar sounds in this scale, I think. This is the starting of our blues scale. With just this scale alone, I can do all kinds of things like. [MUSIC] Of course, I was trying to add string bands in here, but I want you to experiment with this and have fun. This is a scale that you can do a lot of really cool things with. [MUSIC] As we get used to playing the scale, I would recommend varying up the notes, so that we aren't just going straight up and down the scale, but actually, we're trying to come up with melodies that sound good to you. [MUSIC] Use the lessons that you learned from the finger exercises to change up your fingering and string combos, but instead using the scale. [MUSIC] 7. Expanding the Minor Pentatonic Scale: [MUSIC] Now that we've learned the basic position of the pentatonic scale, there are a couple of ways that we can expand this scale to reach larger parts of the neck. I'm going to start with my first finger on the third fret this time. We're going to have this simple pattern. We're going to go with our first and third finger, third fret, fifth fret, then I'm going to move up to the A string and go third fret, fifth fret, seventh fret. Then I'm going to repeat this exact same pattern on the next two strings. We're going to start on the D string and we're going to go from the fifth fret to the seventh fret, and then move up one and go fifth fret, seven fret, ninth fret. Here with my first finger, I'm going to do a little shift up to the eighth fret, but still keeping the same patterns. We're going to go first finger, third finger on the eighth fret and the 10th fret of the B string. Then we're going to go up one more string and we're going to go eighth fret, 10 fret, and slide it up to the 12th fret. The whole thing together is going to look like this. [MUSIC] Make sure you're sliding up with your third finger here. We're going to slide up with our third finger again. We're going to do a little shift for the B string. We're starting on the eighth fret for that B string. We're going to go backwards now. We're going to come back down. Then when you come back down, we're going to shift with our third finger this time. From here, we're going to hit the ninth fret of this G string and go backwards. On the way back down, we're sliding that first finger instead of the third finger. We're here, slide back down. We'll do one more time, but a little faster for you. We have this, slide, slide and shift, coming back down. [MUSIC] Again, same rule applies to your right hand; we're never losing that alternate pick. It's going to be down, up, down, up, down, up. Not only does this allow you to connect to larger parts of the guitar neck, but it also allows for some new patterns and some new ways of thinking. Let me show you a different pattern. Starting from the fifth fret here, we're going to slide up and actually start on the eighth fret this time with our first finger. This is a similar pattern. We're going to go first finger and third finger, only we're starting on the eighth fret. We have eighth fret, 10th fret, slide up to the 12th. Then on the next string, first finger and third finger play 10th and 12th fret. Then we're going to move up one more string and continue that same pattern. We have 10th fret, 12th fret, 14th fret, and then move up and we play 12th fret, 14th fret here. Then we're going to shift just like we did with that other pattern. Our first finger now starts on the 13th fret. We're going to do this one more time. We got right here, slide up, and we're landing way up here on the 17th fret. Coming backwards, we have. [MUSIC] Then we're going to do a little shift with our third finger again, coming back down and then one more time. If we want to go back down to that original root note, we can. I'm going to do this one more time for you, but a little faster. We're here starting from the eighth fret, we have. [MUSIC] Then we continue the next string. We do the shift with our first finger. Coming back down, shift with our third finger here, and then come all the way back down, and then we can add that root note again. One more time, just even a little faster here. We're going to go. [MUSIC] Now that we have both of these extended patterns, we can reach these deeper parts and neck. We're going all the way up to the 17th fret, and we're coming all the way down to the third fret of the low E string. This is a lot of territory to cover, and we still have our original pentatonic scale. But what we've got to start doing is connecting these. As we start to mess around with some blue stuff, I can come up and switch between the scale and then slide up to the new position. Or I can go all the way. Then you can start really getting. [MUSIC] You can really start covering a lot of territory with just these skills. As you start to practice and learn these skills better, you're going to recognize a lot of the rock and the blue sounds that you're familiar with, and we're going to expand on in the next lesson. 8. Learning the 12 Bar Blues: [MUSIC] Blues is a genre that has an absolutely immense amount of history. It originated in the deep South in the 1860s and has influenced almost every major genre in today's world. It's a joyful, exuberant music full of upbeat rhythms and playful humor. But at its core, it's also a deeply sad music that deals with suffering, loneliness, and depression. There are tons of sub-genres to blues music, but for today, we're just going to be sticking with the basic 12-bar blues. I'm going to start with an open A chord, we have. [MUSIC] The chords that we're going to be working with today, we're going to have an A major, D major, and an E major. [MUSIC] From here, I'm going to play with this a little bit. I'm going to use my first finger to bar this. On the second fret here with this A string, and then I'm going to use my third finger, and my pinky to play on the D string the fourth fret and the fifth fret. I'm going to start like this, [MUSIC] the pinky. [MUSIC] When I switch to the D chord, I'm still going to hold it the same, but I'm going to use my pinky here to add to the fourth fret of the G string here as I play, same embellishment. [MUSIC] Then we're going to go back to the A chord and do the same thing. [MUSIC] Then for the E chord, we're actually just going to move our fingers straight down and do a little bar on the second fret of the A string and the E string here with our first finger, and the same thing that we did for that A chord, where I'm using my third finger and fourth finger, I'm going to do that, but this time I'm going to play fourth fret and fifth fret on the A string. [MUSIC] Now that we have our core patterns, we're going to figure out the form of the song. Blues is a 12-bar form, which means every bar we have four beats, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, moving on to the next bar, and we're going to start off on A, and we're going to play four bars of A. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Then we're going to go up to the D, and we're going to play 2 bars of D, 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, and then back to A for two bars 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4. Now this time, we're going to do the E for only one bar, 1, 2, 3, 4, then to the D for one bar, 1, 2, 3, 4, then back to the A 1, 2, 3, 4. Then the very last bar is E again, 1, 2, 3, 4. The whole thing is going to sound like this, we have. [MUSIC] [inaudible] the D and then A. [MUSIC] Now that we know the form of the 12-bar blues, we're going to switch it up from these chords [MUSIC] to some dominant chords, which are the main chords used in the blues. I'm going to start with an open A dominant chord, which is going to be like this. [MUSIC] I have my middle finger on the second fret of the D string, and my third finger is on the second fret of the B string, and the rest of the strings are going to be open, and we're going to strum down starting from the A string. [MUSIC] As you can hear, there's that nice blues sound already to it. [MUSIC] For the D chord, we're literally going to move our two fingers down like this. Now it's second fret of the G string and the high E string, and we're going to add our first finger to the first fret of the B string, and we're going to strum now from D going. [MUSIC] That's our D dominant chord, and we go back to A. For the E dominant chord, we're going to bring these fingers down so I have now second fret of the A string, and then I'm going to use my first finger and play first fret of the G string, and we're going to strum all of the strings, [MUSIC] and that's our E dominant chord. If we keep the same blues form, and I just messed with playing with these chords, it can sound something like this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3 [MUSIC] then we have E, 2, 3, 4, then D, 2, 3, then back to the A, and we're going to finish it off with E. [MUSIC] If we want to make things even a little more challenging, we can start with bar chords. I'm going to move up to the fifth fret. I'm going to bar my finger all the way across the fifth fret with my first finger, and then with my third finger, I'm going to play the seventh fret of the A string, and with my middle finger, I'm going to play the sixth fret of the G string. Altogether this chord is going to sound like this. [MUSIC] It's still an A dominant chord, but now we have a little bit more range. Instead of here, [MUSIC] we have these higher notes that come into play. [MUSIC] It sounds great. You can use both of these together. If you you to switch from here to here, totally fine. For the D chord, we're going to move up one string. I'm going to bar my finger across the fifth fret again, starting from the A string, and with my third finger, I'm going to play the seventh fret of the D string, and with my pinky, I'm going to play the seventh fret of the B string. We're strumming downwards from the A string and it's going to sound like this. [MUSIC] This is our D dominant chord. Again, we get this nice little range. Down here it sounds like this, [MUSIC] up at the fifth fret, it sounds like this. [MUSIC] Again, these chords are both D dominant and they're both interchangeable. For the E chord, we're going to do something a little different. We're going to do something called the Hendrix chord. Starting here, we're going to place our middle finger on the seventh fret of the A string. With our first finger, we're going to place on the D string on the sixth fret. [MUSIC] Third finger is seventh fret of the G string, and then with our pinky eighth fret on the B string. This is probably the most complicated chord shape that we've done so far, and with this, we're going to play starting from the low E, going up to where our pinky is. [MUSIC] They call this the Hendrix chord because he does this famously in the song called Purple Haze. But this is what we're going to do for our E chord. If we play the blues using these three chords, it's going to sound like this. [MUSIC] 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, then D, [MUSIC] back to the A. [MUSIC] Now the tricky part, the Hendrix chord, and then D, back to A, and then Hendrix chord. [MUSIC] Now we're back at the top again. If we want to take that D chord and spice it up just a little bit more, there's a voicing that I like to play called the D9 chord. It looks like this. [MUSIC] I'm going to take my middle finger, place it on fifth fret of the A string, first finger goes on the fourth fret of the D string, third finger goes on the fifth fret of the G string, and my pinky is going to go on the B string on the fifth fret as well. [MUSIC] If this doesn't feel comfortable for you, another way to do this is to take the third finger and to bar it across the top three strings at the fifth fret like this. [MUSIC] We can actually get that high string in there as well. This is a nice way to play the D chord. Coming from here, [MUSIC] and switching to that D chord. [MUSIC] Now we're really getting that blue sound. [MUSIC] Gone is the Hendrix chord. [MUSIC] Now the D9, back to the A, and the Hendrix chord to end it. [MUSIC] Now we've learned the 12-bar blues and a couple of different ways to play the chords. Keep in mind that these chords can be mixed and matched at different times to spice up your blues. Join me in the next lesson where we're going to be adding the blue note to our pentatonic scale. 9. Adding the “Blue” Note: [MUSIC] Now that we have a feel for the blues form and the pentatonic scale. Let's add a little note into the scale called the Blue Note. It got its name because it's one of the notes that our ears recognize as the key sounds of blues. It's a note that normally isn't found in the key, but it adds all kinds of greediness, tension, and depth to our blues, so here it is. When I take my original pentatonic scale [MUSIC] I'm now going to add in this note, we're going to go from here. On the a string, I'm going to go instead of 5th to 7th fret, I'm going to add in [MUSIC] 5th, 6th, and then 7th fret. I'm going to do that with my first, middle and third fingers so we have [MUSIC] I'm going to keep going. This time on the G string, we're going to switch to 5th fret, 7th fret, and then with our pinky, the A fret here that's again the blue note and we're going to keep going [MUSIC] Coming back down we have the Blue Note [MUSIC] If I do that faster, we call it back down. You can already start to hear that nice blue sound starting to develop. Now that we have the basic pentatonic scale position, let's do this again with the expanded positions that I showed you. Starting from the third fret, we're going to go here [MUSIC] First finger, third finger then on the next string we're going to go first finger, third finger slide up one fret to the 6th fret, and then another fret to the 7th fret. We're going to go like this [MUSIC] and then I'm going to move up to the next string and do that exact same pattern starting from the 5th fret of the D string [MUSIC] Then again, we're going to shift with our first finger, it's to the 8th fret here, do that exact same pattern again [MUSIC] Then when we come back down this time we're going to go like this. Third finger, second finger, first finger, slide, and then when I come down here, shift with the third finger and we're going to go third finger, second finger, first finger, slide. Then again on the A string. If I go all the way up and down again, we're going to go like this [MUSIC] and then come back down [MUSIC] With that second expanded position, we're going to do the same type of thing here, starting from the 8th fret with our first finger, and we're going to go first finger, then third finger on the 10th fret, slide up to the 11th fret, slide up again to the 12th fret, and then 12th fret on the A string, and we're going to move up again, repeat the exact same pattern on the next two strings so we have [MUSIC] We're going to shift again with our first finger so starting on the 13th fret here, same pattern [MUSIC] We go backwards, we're going to go third finger, first finger, and then here we go, 3, 2, 1 with our fingers and then slide. There we're going to shift down with our third finger, repeat the same pattern [MUSIC] If we want to go back down to that root note, we can. Again, play this but a little bit faster this time [MUSIC] Without even doing anything, we're already hearing those sounds that the blues just already been put in there just by adding the blue note in. Once we start experimenting with slides, hammer ons, pull off, spends, we can really get the sound of the blues working. I'm going to give you a little example here of what this sounds like [MUSIC] Now we've learned 12-bar blues, we've added our blue note in, now it's time to practice the scales, practice your string bands, hammer ons, and pull off before we jam out in the next lesson. 10. Jamming Out: [MUSIC] This lesson is all about playing the blues. We know how to play the chords and now we know how to solo too. Let's jam on this 12-bar blues. We're going to start out playing the chords together, then I'm going to do a solo while you play the chords, and then you can solo while I play the chords, and the very last time through, we'll play the chords again together. At the beginning of the track, you're going to hear a count in. There is going to be drumsticks that are going to go 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, and then we ride in. Let's try it out. Here we're playing the chords together. [MUSIC] Now you play the chords while I solo. [MUSIC] Now I play the chords and you solo. [MUSIC] Now we play the chords together to finish it off [MUSIC] Then end of the nice big A-chord here. Congrats on your first jam session. Now the fun doesn't have to stop here, this backing track is available for download in the class resources. Continue using this track to practice your skills and soloing the blues. Keep experimenting to see what new licks you can come up with. For your class assignment, I want you to record yourself soloing and upload it into the project gallery. Keep jamming. 11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] All right, you made it through class 2. We've learned finger exercises and tons of variations to keep your fingers moving and to build dexterity. We learned one of the most used scales in all of music, the minor pentatonic scale, and finally, you learned a gym on a blues. Feel free to go back at any time to ensure that you're comfortable with the various skills. I cannot urge you enough to keep practicing, we need to practice every day to maintain all of these skills and to keep them strong. When you're ready, join me in the next class where we head to the major leagues and take a deep dive into the major scale. [MUSIC]