You probably remember, not so long ago I shared some basic patterns of pentatonic guitar scales. So now we will go a little further by digging into some “sharp” and “flat” scales. This might seem not that interesting at first, but I assure you that the ability to play various guitar scales is essential to every guitarist.
Let me quickly refresh your mind and remind you what the difference between blues scales and standard pentatonic scales is.
A pentatonic scale has 5 distinct notes to be played while a pentatonic blues scale has 6 unique notes. That extra note is called the “blue note”. This is the note that gives this bluesy, sad feel.
Furthermore, let me give you another short lesson – on sharps and flats. These kind of sounds are also called “accidental” notes in musical notation. A sharp raises the pitch of a note one half step, while a flat lowers the pitch one half step. They are “accidental” because it’s easy to hit them by mistake while aiming for their non-sharp equivalents.
On with the business. First scale in this series is the C# or Db pentatonic blues scale. The root note is naturally the C#/Db, and the blue note is G.
Here is the figure:
And here’s the tab you can follow:
You begin on the 4th fret of the A5 string then play the scale until you reach the last note on the 2bd fret of the B2 string.
Now let’s try another pattern that’s a little more challenging. This time, you will need to flex your left hand fingers and try to make use of all of them.
Have a look at this figure:
Here’s the tab:
The figure above instructs you to start playing on the 9th fret of the E6 string and then progress through two sets of the scale until you reach the last note on the 9th fret of the E1 string. This time, the last note is two octaves higher than the first root note.
If you want to learn more you can visit all-guitar-chords.com and get the full pattern for the C#/Db pentatonic blues scale (click here).
Comments by Carlos
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Thanks for commenting, Olaf :)