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Blues and Exotic Scales for CBG...

I keep seeing these charts -

What does this mean? Does it mean that if you are playing G blues (far left), you only hit the black dots, and if you hit any other notes it's gonna sound terrible? Can someone explain this chart to me. NOOB HERE!

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on April 27, 2017 at 6:16pm

Yes, true for archaic North Mississippi hill country blues without chord progression, otherwise not correct:
A simple 12 bar blues has the structure abaa/bbaa/cbac.
If the «a» bars are key of G, use the G scale for them, for the «b» bars use the C scale, and for the «c» bars the D scale.
You played bass? Try to play some blues bass lines on your box and you will get the idea.

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Permalink Reply by Snuffy Smith on April 27, 2017 at 7:12pm

Yes, played bass...back around 1987, LOL. It's been years. BUT, I never knew anything about "notes". I played everything by ear, meaning: I fumbled around the neck constantly and after awhile knew where I needed to go to find the write notes. I know it's untraditional, but I just picked it up and started figuring things out, and was playing well, but nobody said to me, "That fret is this note." I just figured things out and memorized them. But I know nothing about A-G notes.

As a drummer, for years I'd played 12 bar blues in songs, but honestly I had no idea that's what they called it. Took drum lessons for years, but it was all percussion talk....no "tuned" music talk.

I'm gonna take lessons on this CBG. I have alot to learn. I just want my CBG....it's still being built.

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Permalink Reply by JL on April 28, 2017 at 2:11am

grab any fretted instrument you have handy

pick a string and play the following:

open, 3rd fret, 5th fret, 7th fret, 10th fret, 12th fret.

You just played a blues scale, also called the pentatonic minor

1 - 3flat - 4 - 5 - 7flat - octave (which is a repeat of 1)

nearly every metal/rock/blues/jazz lead guitar solo is based on jumping around on just these notes

for any note you can name, you can find it at 4 or more spots on the fingerboard

gitty has taken the time to give you a cheat sheet showing you all the places that all of these 5 notes live to make it easier for you to make up a lead/solo.

If the song is in the key of G Minor use the first one labeled G Blues

if the song is in the key of A Minor, use the second one labeled A Blues

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Extra Credit = look carefully at the shapes/boxes and you can see its a repeating pattern that starts in different places depending on which key it's in.