Rock & Blues Guitar – Blues Scale 5 Positions – Rick Washbrook – Say’s “You Wont Get Lost”

Rock & Blues Guitar – Blues Scale 5 Positions – Rick Washbrook – Say’s “You Wont Get Lost”

Blues Guitar – Blues Scale – 5 Positions – Rick Washbrook – Say’s  “You Wont Get Lost”

Start with the top two or three strings.  This  gives you a strong foothold for learning easy rememerable licks

When you have one lick you love for each blues scale position ( All 5 remember) you will remember the fingering of each blues scale position faster. I call it a target lick. It helps you to not get lost in each position when playing.

The blues scale, also called the Pentatonic scale is the most important one of all guitar scales when playing the blues.

Lets start by talking about the way it has been taught for so many years to learn blues scales on the guitar. A guitarist will get a book that shows him the tab fingerings, and patterns for the five positions on the fret board of the guitar. This is an intellectual method.

I feel this is the worst way to learn at first the five positions of the blues scale.  It really waists the guitar student a lot of time. It does not teach the student how to make blues expression with the 3 or 4 note licks he or she learns for all 5 positions of the blues scale.

It most definatly trains the ear to first play your traditional target blues lick for position #2 for esample, you then will figure out by ear the rest of the notes for the entire blues scale on the other lower strings. Dont give up and say I cant ear it.  Go back to your target traditional blues lick in position #2 and then get in the groove and use your ear to find the other notes. if you have to of course look at the tab of the positions.  But try not to do that to much.

The methode I am showing you is helping you learn many things at once. Your learning a target emotional grabing blues lick for each position of the blues scale. You are then training your ear to find the other notes of the blues scale in the different possitins. You are playing real blues while your are learning the notes on te positions.  You see if you do this all at once you will save years of time.

The student in the beginning spends so much energy and time memorizing the five different blues scale positions and fingerings, when they could have been playing traditional two or three string licks, like B.B. King, or Eric Clapton style.

So to sum it up the method will show you a different traditional identifiable blues lick for each of the five blues scale positions. This is the golden rule, the path to true expression of playing the notes  with feel while you learn them.

You will progress later for example using 3rd and 4th strings to make up our identifiable lick for each position. You do this the same way as I explained before so you will have a lick memorized as a triger lick for each five positions of the blues scale now on the say 3rd and 4th strings.  When you move up or down on the fret board you will not get lost.  This way it is enjoyable  to practice and feel alive with your blues playing, all 5 Positions, “You Wont Get Lost”.

I have showed you so a real blues way to get started

How do you make that blues scale sound like your playing the blues?

You hear so many students ask this question? You wont be saying this.

“I know all the 5 positions of the blues scale. I learned it from a book, and I cant play the blues, I just cant make it sound like the blues. To me it just sounds like I am playing notes up and down the strings”?

This is the most common statement l hear. This is why I share this method with you. It leads to so much more.

Do you want to see how you can play confident, and with ease moving through all five positions of the blues scale up and down the guitar neck?

Do you want to see in your minds eye see the hammer on, pull of licks, found in the middle frets of all the five blues scale positions on the guitar?

Do you want to be able to play the sweet three note chord areas of the guitar on the, 4th string, 3rd string, and 2nd string using only the blues scale notes?

Do you want to see how you can add the b5 blues note using this method in all five positions, and invent our own trigger blues licks so you will always remember and know where you are when playing on the guitar fret board all five blues scale positions?

Do you want to be able to jam the blues and not get lost and hit bad notes?

The main thing !!! Do you want to play the blues and not even think about notes?

This is just a few points on how much knowledge you can get from this method.

Blues Guitar – Blues Scale – 5 Positions – Rick Washbrook – Say’s  “You Wont Get Lost”

By:Rick Washbrook

August 10th, 2010