Greetings, blues lovers. Here's another column dedicated to sharing some blues nuggets that I've gathered. Hopefully this column will also expand your knowledge of the instrument and give you a solid foundation to build on.
For the next several articles we'll talk about the chords and scales most useful in playing the blues. Most blues progressions center around chords that are either MAJOR, MINOR or Dominant 7th. One advantage to the commonly used pentatonic minor and minor blues scale is their ability to fit nicely over all three types of chords.
Beyond these scales, the chords can get pretty picky about what you play over them.
These are "A" Major chords:
As a rule an A major chord wants to see the following scales:
These scales constitute the main melodic choices you have when soloing over an A Major chord. Two other important chords in the major family are the major 6th and major 7th chords.
A6
A Major 7th A Major 7th
The last three scales on the list will work great over an A major 6th chord but will not work over an A major 7th.
A better choice for that would be one of the first three major scales. Granted, the major scale by itself is not that bluesy, but everything else is based on it. I've included it for your basic musical literacy.
Next time, we'll cover scales that will work well over the dominant 7th chords. The time after that, we'll cover minor chord and the scales that suit them. Then you'll have a very complete reference for what scales work best over the more common chords in blues progressions. Any serious blues guitarist from BB to Stevie Ray has these scales down cold, so don't put it off. Learn them and use them.