Crank Up Your Blues!

Want to expand your blues-rock vocabulary? Richard Barrett looks at the seven positions of the Minor scale using three-fingers-per-string ideas, culminating in a solo that incorporates them with the Minor Pentatonic.

- Richard Barrett

While the old maxim of “It’s not what you play, but the way you play it” remains true, this is no reason not to explore new ideas and patterns especially when these can give our playing more expression, a greater melodic feel and, yes, a few new licks! Undeniably, many inspiring solos have been played using purely the perennial and always incredibly useful Minor Pentatonic scale, but many more also feature a little added interest by way of a few extra melodic or ‘passing’ notes from outside those ‘pure’ Pentatonic shapes.