This is the diff between real blues, and the pretend stuff you hear so much of. It's like the big open secret that no one ever seems to teach you. Everyone seems to find out by themselves. I ran into trying to learn the opening intro improv on Clapton's crossroads blues.

This major minor dynamic is a HUGE part of what makes electric blues guitar sound the way it does.

I'm still figuring out exactly where it goes - and you can't use it in a minor blues (we play B.B. King's, The Thrill is Gone, for e.g.). But in most blues, this is key to the sound. Take a listen to the solo on Strange Brew by Cream. It's an immitation of an Albert King solo. You'll hear that major third just once, I think. But it makes all the diff.

B.B. switches between major and minor depending on what chord the song is on. Almost always he starts with the major. He plays hell out of the minor on the V (if I'm remembering correctly).

Very cool thing to discover. It blew me away. I'd never heard a single word about it before I ran into it, and found that all the blues greats' stuff is lousy with it.

if you playing a double stop that gets a major third hammered on to it... its not a lead guitar thing... just a music thing. And its useful because it sets up that tension of the tritone (b7 and maj 3rd).

Most often used in blues, country and funk. It just gives so much 'tude to the piece.

Did that help?

hey 'okes

found out during my lessons with a local teacher here, that its called the 'common blues trick'. its a single note lick/phrase where you do in fact hammer-on from the major to the minor third. thanks for your gents input nonetheless. ?

The major 3rd trick comes from the fact that you are playing over a dominant 7th chord which has a major 3rd interval. A more difficult question to ask is why does the minor pentatonic or blues scale with the minor 3rd seem to work as well. In fact there are a slew of numbers that exploit this duality, Sleepy Time by The Cream or Texas flood by SRV are good examples.

It is very common and is called a blue note. You can play around by flattening the 3rd and the 5th in a 12 bar blues and in jazz improvising.

But sticking with blues..... these blue notes are commonly used as passing tones..... or starting a bend on a blue note with it landing on a scale note or chord tone......hammering on to a blue note or pulling off one...etc etc etc. You sort of pass through with it rather than sustaining it over the chord. You can do that too but the idea with the tension and release is for it to be musical and evoke emotion. I mean, consider that the I chord in a 12 bar in G is going to be a G7 or a G9, G13 etc and the 3rd of that chord is B natural........... but in your G Blues Scale you will have a Bb.

G Blues Scale ( one version of it )



So you will want to bend that Bb a half step or hammer on to the B natural ...stuff like that.....and I really mean most of the time.....LOL.....the "rules" are meant to be broken.....all the time.

But for example, here is a short lick in G Blues where you start on the (blue note) minor 3rd, hammer on to the maj 3rd. This is a good opening lick, very common.



Here is a double stop lick that you can use on the turnaround....... in this one you will hammer on from the minor 3rd to the major 3rd two times and then end with the last two double stops in the example where there is the flattened 5th used in the 2nd to last one. The last one of course fits over the V chord, the D9.



EDIT: This is kinda the ryhthm of it.....just play the notes choppy like a B3 set to a staccato sound or as if it were a horn part..this basic TAB program does not have a way to put a staccato on the notes etc and editing it is tough so I just did it basic.

So the same lick with timing.......



Lastly, this one starts by bending the 3rd string 5th fret a whole step....2 semitones and then the flat 5 is used as a passing tone ....the 6-5-3 lick on the 3rd string..........again the minor 3rd blue note hammer's on to the major 3rd and then actually bends a half step...1 semitone before resolving to the root on the 4th string 5th fret.




These are all very common blues licks that I just pulled out of my head...standard stuff. Excuse the TAB........I just used a quick and easy program I have rather than opening Sibelius etc which is like pulling teeth when you are in a hurry.

I hope these help someone.

What a lekker little lesson, and so well presented. Thanks for that.

great lesson HC - keep 'em coming.... !!! :applause: :yup:

Very nice Highway. Thanked for being a well presented post and will certainly help many aspirant blues players.

But hold on. Surely the flat 5 is the blue note? The Db in the G minor pentatonic? ???

The minor 3rd is just a standard "non-blue" part of the minor pentatonic. What am I missing? I never heard the minor 3rd referred to as a blue note before.

Nice lesson HC but a little correction as Singe points out the only blues note is the flat 5 which is Db in your example, However Blues players pay homage to the the major 3rd by giving the minor 3rd a slight tweak. If you really want to expand your blues playing try this Take a standard 12 bar in G viz
G7 | C7 | G7 | G7 | C7 | C7 | G7 | G7 | D7 | C7 | G7 | D7 .
You know you can improvise over it using G blues scale now try improvise over the same progression using E blues scale 8)

singemonkey wrote: But hold on. Surely the flat 5 is the blue note? The Db in the G minor pentatonic? ??? The minor 3rd is just a standard "non-blue" part of the minor pentatonic. What am I missing? I never heard the minor 3rd referred to as a blue note before.

Singe there are so many scales and arpeggio's.... actually you can apply any of them as long as what you are doing is musical and/or fits the genre.

However, perhaps you meant something else, because Db is not a scale tone in the G Minor Pentatonic scale, as I know it.

The notes are.......

G Bb C D F G

And the Major Pentatonic is.........

G A B D E G


In the case of the Minor Pentatonic, yes you are correct in that you would not refer to the minor 3rd as a "blue note" .......because it is already flatted. However, if you were playing over a major chord using the Major Pentatonic scale but then switched to the Minor Pentatonic or even if you just played a minor 3rd, then you could refer to that min 3rd as a blue note.

What is meant by the term blue note in the case of the Blues Scale is because you are playing a minor 3rd and/or a flat 5 over a chord that has a major 3rd and/or a perfect 5th.

Blue note can also refer to the flat 7th but I left it out to try not be confusing, because a dominant 7th chord already has a flat 7 in it....the minor 7, an interval of 10 semitones. Since in blues we are dealing with dominant seventh chords almost all the time it seems silly to me to refer to it as the flat seventh.

However in jazz you might have the major seventh chord a lot and so if you played a minor (flattened) seventh against that....you would call it a blue note. Again, you would want to use it as a passing note or bend it so as to not sustain the note against the chord tone seventh which is a semitone above it....a minor second interval which depending how you use it is very dissonant.

I personally love sweet dissonance and love the minor second found in certain chords......but I digress.......

Basically think of a blue note as one that sets up a certain tension and then the release as it resolves to correct chord tone.

Blues is all about tension and release.

Anyway, I am no theory expert by any stretch of the imagination, this is just my understanding of things from years of application. Try not to get too hung up on what is a blue note though......... it is just a term used to explain or even justify certain scale notes. Just think of them as passing tones or whatever.

What is more important than any scale is the sound of what you are playing, how what you are doing relates to the chord tones or even the mood you are trying to create.

Personally, my favorite scale is the Lydian Auxiliary Diminished Blues Scale......... a fancy name for the scale, as it is referred to in George Russell's awesome book.....The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. This scale is more commonly known as the Half Whole scale and contains both the minor and major 3rd, the flat 5th and the perfect 5th, the minor 7th, the sharp 9th and the flat 9th. I love the outside nature of this scale and have been using it as often as possible, since 1980 or so, being a staple in my improvisational palette.

However, while I find this scale great for Dominant 7th's.......if I am soloing over a straight blues I will avoid using it as it will take the sound of the improvisation way out of blues and more into a jazz fusion thing........something that will cause a frown or three among blues purists.

In fact, this is the most common mistake inexperienced rock players make when jamming straight blues.......playing too many notes and the wrong notes. Nobody want's to hear how fast you are, whammy divebombs, chorus pedals or flangers etc and a thousand passing tones played at blinding speed, that say nothing, using a Dorian mode or what have you. LOL...."are you at the wrong jam? The rock jam is two doors down!"

Blues is all about feel and staying true to the form. Less is more. In a blues, one or two "right" note's can say so much more than a bunch of notes that are played merely for flash value.

If you are going to show some fast chops in a blues, you must set it up by playing a lot of traditional stuff.....showing that you know and respect the style and then fold in some fast runs. SRV, Albert Collins, Albert King, Buddy Guy........all great examples of this.

Singe there are so many scales and arpeggio's.... actually you can apply any of them as long as what you are doing is musical and/or fits the genre. However, perhaps you meant something else, because Db is not a scale tone in the G Minor Pentatonic scale, as I know it.

That is exactly the point Db is not in G Minor Pentatonic it is in the G Blues scale which is derived from the G Minor pentatonic scale but adds the Blue note which in this case is Db. (I'm sorry to be so pedantic about this point but I have a thing about misinformation particularly as it relates to blues it's theory and its origins)

i must admit, i have very slight knowledge of what you guys are talking about!
Most of it is just going over my head :-[

but carry one, this is very interesting! one day i hope to fully understand it ?

thanks for the great topic though! really ?

PS... all this talk makes me think i should have been "uncool" and taken music in school!
How i regret it now! :-[

I just saw your post Rene..... digesting. ?

Okay because I seem to not be able to really explain this in an understandable manner I will refer to a Wiki explanation which jives with how I see it. I have been studying this stuff for 40 years and it just comes naturally to me, but explaining it might be another story. I can speak and write good English but I have forgotten many of the actual rules or formula's.....I just apply them without thinking. I get caught out so many times when my kids ask what is a preposition or whatever.....stuff they are studying in school.

Some Wiki excerpts.........


In jazz and blues, a blue note (also "worried" note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres. Country blues, in particular, features wide variations from the diatonic pitches with emotive blue-notes. Blue notes are often seen as akin to relative pitches found in traditional African work songs.

Like the blues in general, the blue notes can mean many things. One quality that they all have in common, however, is that they are flatter than one would expect, classically speaking. But this flatness may take several forms. On the one hand, it may be a microtonal affair of a quarter-tone or so. Here one may speak of neutral intervals, neither major nor minor. On the other hand, the flattening may be by a full semitone--as it must be, of course, on keyboard instruments. It may involve a glide, either upward or downward. Again, this may be a microtonal, almost imperceptible affair, or it may be a slur between notes a semitone apart, so that there is actually not one blue note but two

The blue notes are usually said to be flattened third, flattened fifth, and flattened seventh scale degrees.

Though the blues scale has "an inherent minor tonality, it is commonly 'forced' over major-key chord changes, resulting in a distinctively dissonant conflict of tonalities" as well as the blue notes. A similar conflict occurs between the notes of the minor scale and the minor blues scale

I mean that is it as far as I have learned it, and I ain't changing how I see it now......no Sir-ee Bob! ?

Also, I was correcting Singe in that the Minor Pentatonic does not have a Db....... and since it already has a minor 3rd, yes you would not call that a blue note. However, if you did play the Db, you could call it a blue note.

Here is the thing, more important than arguing or debating what a blue note is or what scale is best etc etc....... the idea is to play the right notes. This can be a scale or it can be arpeggio's, chord tones and a mix of all the above.

The ear should hold precedence over everything.

Bear in mind that there are also different kinds and styles of blues.....Delta, Chicago, Jump, Jazz Blues, Texas style, blues rock, minor blues etc etc etc and they will all require a different approach. A song like Stormy Monday can be approached differently by either playing a single straight blues scale over the whole thing or by applying arpeggio's and substitutions etc etc. A jump blues the same...lot's of substitutions and altered dominant 7th chords perhaps........ but Sonny Boy Williamson's Bring It On Home or Muddy Waters' Rock Me Baby might call for a different approach.

In fact look at the song Rock Me Baby......the different interpretations....... BB, Muddy, Jimi.......

As far as playing an E Blues scale over a G Blues. Again, there are only 12 notes to pick from here........... so it is how you play them that is important, which one's you pick to accent, which are passing tones etc etc. You could take a Pentatonic, Blues scale, Dorian , Lydian etc and combine them and get many of the available notes....it is which one's you pick. If you played that E Blues over a 12 bar in G and you accented the E root against the G chord-in other words staying in the "block" on the neck - you would not want to accent it as if it was an E Blues Scale.....a bit odd right? What you would want to do is pick out which of the notes to accent that really sound nice against the G7, C7 and D7.

If you do start playing notes not in the G Blues....like in your E Blues example..... all that is going on here is that you are dipping into other notes in the modes. But yeah.....I do that all the time, that stuff comes naturally to me....LOL...... eyes closed and both hands tied behind my back...... ??? :-\

I personally don't see it as paying homage to the major 3rd as that note is in the chord already, but the statement is fine and I am reading your mail....although to my way of thinking, if anything it is the minor 3rd that is out of place but that is the whole idea of the blues scale. To me both are equally important.

This stuff is subjective.......what is right for you might not be right for me. I play all over the neck and I dip in and out of different scales all the time. But I am not going to play a Harmonic Minor scale over a 12 bar blues .....I will be lookig for the notes that really say something, if I can find them...... ?

ja ja ...

I think the confusion comes from you using a more sophisticated definition of the blue note than I'm used to seeing. I've always read about it just being that extra note in the pentatonic (making it a "heptatonic" scale?) for the blues scale - the flatted fifth. I know it was designed as a stand in for quarter tones in traditional west-African music, and I can see that in your more advanced definition ? Very interesting. Will try to figure that out.

If you are going to show some fast chops in a blues, you must set it up by playing a lot of traditional stuff.....showing that you know and respect the style and then fold in some fast runs. SRV, Albert Collins, Albert King, Buddy Guy........all great examples of this.

This I can not disagree with. I'd go even further and say that very few musicians manage to put very fast runs into blues without my engagement dropping out of what they're playing. Gary Moore is probably the only one I can think of. Bonnamassa leaves me cold the moment he starts widdling - even though he precedes them with very fine, emotional playing. Two seconds of widdly wee and I'm like, "turn it off."

I'd much rather listen to Albert king play the same four notes over and over in various sequences and rhythms.

Renesongs wrote: I have a thing about misinformation particularly as it relates to blues it's theory and its origins)

I have the same problem! 8)

Listen Rene, I really don't want to get into a pissing competition with you..... but the misinformation thing has tweaked me. The idea was to be helpful and I think I know what I am talking about, when it comes to the blues.

I am also less interested in the history of it as I am in the playing of it.

That is the real beauty of the blues....pure blues...... the feel of it, what it does for the emotions, how it reaches down inside you. If one has to analyze it to death and argue about the origins and the technicalities of it, the whole point of it........ is being missed.

singemonkey wrote: Two seconds of widdly wee and I'm like, "turn it off."

The whole thing is the intent. If the intent is to show off chops...yeah, goodbye...

Listen Rene, I really don't want to get into a pissing competition with you..... but the misinformation thing has tweaked me.

Hey HC I'm sorry I offended you - I have noticed that there are many conflicting histories and theories of what constitutes the blues and how it developed some which enhance my understanding and abilities to teach blues and others I find contradictory and unhelpful. Lets just say we both see an the elephant in the room but my side of the elephant looks a little different from yours

I think what they were trying to say is that the Minor Pentatonic has 1 b3 4 5 b7 so the b3 isn't considered the blues note as its part of the minor pentatonic already. The blues scale has the b3 b5 and b7 so when they add the b5 to the Minor pentatonic scale you get 1 b3 4 b5 5 b7 which is now a portion of the blues scale. But since the b3 is part of the regular minor pentatonic it isn't considered the blues note, while the b5 is not part of the minor pentatonic but is part of the blues scale and gets added in to make it a blues scale and thus it is considered the blues note.

Basically, the b3, b5 and b7 are all blues notes but since the b3 and b7 are already in the minor pentatonic the b5 is called the 'blues note' cause by adding it in you change from playing a minor pentatonic to a blues scale.
Ie you can play the b3 and b7 and not be playing a blues scale (like playing minor pentatonic), but if you play the b5 it will be a blues scale (cause its not in the minor pentatonic)

Edit: This isn't super important its really a MINOR issue. Its just a case of is the b3 or b5 named the blues note, which is just a name...the application and the lesson taught was still very helpful about note choice, chords tonals and the tension created and released....(1 small note though is its the b5 that causes the tension...you even mentioned it yourself when you said the Db in the G blues, Db is the b5 in G...and if u play Db over a G blues you will hear the tension...)

I always wondered what was so magical about that blues note, the tension explanation makes it so much clearer now ? +1 thanks ?