Blues Scale

[Jim Sliff]

Alan - No offense, but what does that have to do with the blues or "box" concepts being discussed?

Honestly, It looked like a math page to me. I couldn't figure out what they were really talking about.

[C. Christofferson]

In spotlighting bob's post earlier, it was still in mind of the other great material on the topic thats here, especially Dave D.'s. and other's. That indepth is something that will always be sought after, and an excellent referral to those who ask in the future.

My site

[Ben Jones]

Jim-It's becoming apparent that the box diagrams we love and are used to seeing have a somewhat limited application for the psg. because:
1. once the pedals are involved the box is usually just a straight line
2. you cannot cram pedal notation into our box diagrams, tab works better for that IMHO.
3. many of the no pedal boxes are actually wedges that extend up the neck rather than across, due to the shallow string intervals on a psg. THIS is the biggest obstacle I see to our beloved box diagrams..you can draw a box across, but you'll be playing many of the same notes twice unless you start traveling up the neck, or you'll have only a three string box. Draw a diagonal box up the neck and it gets to be too much info at once.

I agree the word puzzles are the hardest for me to figure out. We've had the position two frets back from root now explained four times in four completely different ways in this thread alone. It wasnt until Tucker actually emailed me the tab for it that it finally clicked for me.

Tho I think root position no pedals blues scale should be presented in the beginners instructional material in box diagram for us guitarists, i gotta admit i should have just found the thing on my own right away. All we had to do was find root and just hit or miss on the notes from there until we found our blues box (you can almost feel where the intervals are gonna be anyway). It seems silly that i never bothered before...

too busy using my ten minutes of practice a day to perfect Mansion on the Hill I guess (and it still aint perfect)

[Alan Brookes]

Alan - No offense, but what does that have to do with the blues or "box" concepts being discussed?

Honestly, It looked like a math page to me. I couldn't figure out what they were really talking about.

I only added the link because the "blues" scale is one of the Greek pentatonic scales with a new name. Like you, keeping all that information in my head while playing seems a bit like doing mathematical exercises. I don't have that much processing power !

[b0b]

10th fret is home, use any of the pedals, up and down.
Slide into the 12th fret, but don't use the pedals at the 12th fret unless you want to sound more country.
At the 12th fret, use your knee to lower the 2nd string by a half.
At the 15th fret, use the first pedal up and down.

BOb-, no disrespect intended but I dont understand this at all. Perhaps thats why you say you have to repeat it every six months, or maybe im juts dense. Tenth fret is home in the key of E? Tenth fret on what string? use ANY pedal?? what does that mean?

You put the bar at the 10th fret. the box consists of all of the strings at that fret, and you can alter them with ANY pedal. The root is on the 1st and 7th strings, but I left that out because Jim Sliff has an aversion to anything that includes the scary theory words like "root". Besides, that's not important. What's important is understanding that the "blues box" in E with pedals is at the 10th fret. You can "feel" that the root is the 7th string.

Here's the box form I see in my head when I'm playing rock and blues licks in E at the 10th fret. The pedals and levers are in the "invisible" dimension - they aren't different fret positions, they're different pedal and knee motions, represented by the standard pedal and knee lever names here.[tab]1 ______10______________
2 ______10______________
3 ______10__10B_________
4 ______10_______10C___
5 ______10_______10A___
6 ______10__10B_________
7 ______10______________
8 _10E__10______________
9 _10D__________________
10 ____ 10_______10A___ [/tab]But of course the same notes are available with fret movements if you want.

If you are all guitar players as you say, ...

I said "most", as indicated by a recent forum poll.

... then you know what we are asking for, a simple block diagram of the no pedals blues box root position using a fretboard view.

Why would you want it without pedals? I mean, it's the same as a lap steel then. Pretty easy to find on your own. I thought this discussion was about finding the boxes on pedal steel. I'll butt out now, as it seems that I misinterpreted the whole topic.

[John Lockney]

To play the right notes at the right time it seems you have to know what the chord is and to think of scales as "notes" instead of "shapes". (is what I tell my-self as I look for short-cuts)

[Dennis Schell]

Novice blues musicians try to use a simple melody and the I, IV, V7 12-bar form and it all comes out sounding the same. What they miss is that good blues musicians make the melody much more complex with grace notes, trills, quavers, and slurs. It is very difficult for a novice to capture all of that, and they end up with an oversimplified stereotypical melody that always sounds the same.

Well said and I agree. There are some clips at YouTube of Eric Clapton playing Robert Johnson slide acoustic stuff that a lot of young "bluesmen" probably couldn't follow and may even think was played "wrong" somehow....

The rythmns and changes and progressions are definately NOT the "standard 12 bar" variety! Lots to learn there....

FWIW,

Dennis

[Ben Jones]

Why would you want it without pedals? I mean, it's the same as a lap steel then. Pretty easy to find on your own. I thought this discussion was about finding the boxes on pedal steel. I'll butt out now, as it seems that I misinterpreted the whole topic.

-without pedals because thats the easiest for us to relate to as guitarists. easy to find on our own? yes turns out it is as i said in my last post, I feel foolish for not just finding it on my own, but maybe not so easy for a beginner, why not give them the help they were surely seeking when they asked for or purchased the info? thats what instructional material and especially beginners material should be about. This discussion IS about pedal steel bOb. Please dont butt out now, your input is most welcome and appreciated. You surely use those lap style licks in your playing dont you? David has stated in this thread that when playing blues licks its mostly bar movement, and when i see RR play, what i think im seeing is alot of bar movement and very little pedal movement...now I realize of course pedal movement is an integral part and even the defining feature of the psg, but single note lap style stuff is a big part of the psg as well especially in blues and most relevant to this discussion, it is THAT part which is closest to what a guitar player knows about and since its widely beleived most psg newbs come from guitar, it would follow that some material they could easily relate to would be a good thing to include in the beginners stuff. Thanks for explaining the minor scale stuff. Im gonna go try it out now.

[P Gleespen]

[tab]1 ______10______________
2 ______10______________
3 ______10__10B_________
4 ______10_______10C___
5 ______10_______10A___
6 ______10__10B_________
7 ______10______________
8 _10E__10______________
9 _10D__________________
10 ____ 10_______10A___ [/tab]But of course the same notes are available with fret movements if you want.

You know, I tried to figure out a way to write out the "box" with the pedal and lever movements shown, but couldn't come up with something so simple and (dare I say it?) elegant as that diagram.

That's the box to think about right there Jim and Ben. You can see the shape, it shows you what the pedals do...it's about as close to a standard guitar box illustration as your going to get.

The root is on the 1st and 7th strings, but I left that out because Jim Sliff has an aversion to anything that includes the scary theory words like "root".

I know you're just busting Jim's balls, so to speak, but b0b, I didn't know you had so much funny in your bones! I (since I'm on a computer feel compelled to say) L'd O L! I'm not so sure I R'd O T F or anything, but I most certainly 'd...

[b0b]

Thanks for explaining the minor scale stuff. Im gonna go try it out now.

It's not "minor scale stuff", not really, because it goes over major chord changes. The fact that you can use the notes at the 12th fret is evidence of that - the 12th fret sounds totally wrong in the key of E minor.

When you're in E minor, a whole different feel comes into play, with different positions. For example, there's a 13th fret pocket with lowered E strings that is used in E minor, and it just doesn't work in normal E blues/rock tunes.

I think of this 10th fret position as an E7/A7 box for the key of E. The key of E minor is a different bag of tricks.

[Dave Mudgett]

I can easily relate to what Charles French is saying. If he was playin' with Sam Carr, Frank Frost, and Mojo Buford - you can believe he knows about the real blues. If you're not familiar with these guys, I suggest you check them out if you're into deep blues - no fancy technique, no theory, just 100% blues inspired from the Mississippi delta. Their guitarist buddy Big Jack Johnson, one of my favorites, played around the Northeast a lot through the 90s. Again - just raw, gutbucket emotion. The blues band I was in for a long time played a few dates with Jack on the bill. Much fun! He didn't need no fancy equipment either - a Peavey Patriot into whatever amp he had at the time. I had one just like it for years.

I think there are some very good blues players who know music theory, but I can't imagine using it much playing gutbucket blues. Frankly, if I play a lot of scale- or modal-based patterns over real blues, it sounds very contrived - to me, it becomes bluesy jazz or blues-rock, not blues. I like those too, but there is a difference. To play blues, I have to lose myself in it and dump any preconceived plans of what to play. Sometimes that theory knowledge screws me up good. Other times, I think I'm able to get back to the more primitive impulses that make it real. You don't need any theory to hit the backbeat of a lopey shuffle with the rhythm section - it's purely a feel thing. And tell me that Otis Rush's searing guitar playing on Double Trouble worries about theory for even a fraction of a second. Virtually none of the seminal blues comes from a Western-music theoretical perspective, IMO.

By all means, if you need to figure out the general lay of the land on an instrument - learn some of those patterns and/or scales. But those are, at best, rough guideposts to get into the general vicinity of the blues. The single note and its nuances are much more important than any pattern. If you want to see real blues players' eyes just glaze over, start ripping out a bunch of fast pentatonic licks over a slow blues or a lopey shuffle (btw, I think that's where the word lope comes from - the style of players like Jimmy Reed's or Slim Harpo is often referred to as "lopey" or "loping" - i.e., lazy, relaxed, tending to be very behind-the-beat). I see guitarists do it all the time - some of them tremendous players in other styles. IMO, it doesn't sound good to people who are really interested in the blues, and comes off purely as a stunt.

Why would you want it without pedals? I mean, it's the same as a lap steel then.

Well - not exactly. One way to approach blues on steel is to use the pedals to put what amount to slide guitar box patterns all over the neck by different choices of fixed pedal positions. There are tons of them, easily figured out on E9 or universal - most of them are based on stacked open triads. I'm not at all against dynamically using the pedals - as long as it fits and avoids over-using the usual country-style cliches. But many times I prefer a strongly sliding sound in blues, and use the pedals dynamically to link up playing in different box patterns. Lots of the things I try to assiduously avoid in country steel playing - lots of audible sliding-to-notes, string noise with an overdriven amp, side-to-side as opposed to rolling bar vibrato, long sustained notes or double-stops with microtonal variations in pitch, use of dissonance, and so on - sound great in blues.

All IMO, of course.

[Jim Sliff]

but I left that out because Jim Sliff has an aversion to anything that includes the scary theory words like "root".

Nice try b0b, and I know you like to jump me for my lack of theory knowledge - but I specifically ASKED for the root note in a previous diagram someone posted.

So the humor attempt at my expense sort of fell a little flat. And you wonder why I feel kind of dissed at times?

[David Doggett]

The real inspiration for all this blues box stuff on steel is the old Delta and Chicago slide guitar players. Elmore James and Houndog Taylor used open E or D. They had a box at the 12th fret that included dropping down two frets (10th fret) for a lot of notes. I learned that box on slide guitar. On lap or pedal steel I see that box at any fret I am using as a root fret. With the open pedal position, AB pedal postion and A/F position, the string used as the root changes, but the box is still there, just with the strings shifted up one string with the AB pedals, and down one string with the A/F combination. Son House (and sometimes Robert Johnson I think) used an A tuning, so he didn't have a root on the top string. But he still used the same box at the 12th fret, just with everything shifted up one string. This same two-fret box exists at the IV and V frets.

I see the IIIb chord three frets up as part of the same box. So the box really goes from the VIIb fret to the IIIb fret, with the tonic fret in the middle. On pedal steel you can slide among notes on those three frets, plus use the "chromatic" strings, pedals and levers to get notes.

The major difference I see between slide guitar and pedal steel, is that you can play about the same in any key on pedal steel. It is easier to move the box around to different keys. And you can get minor keys without retuning. The extra strings and the pedals and levers slow you down at first, but eventually you get used to that and begin to learn blues type things to do with them. For example, from the tonic fret, you can get that important IIIb chord not only by going up three frets, but also by dropping back two frets and using the A and B pedals. In fact, that is some of what b0b was talking about at the 10th fret in the key of E. These IIIb chord frets are so useful because the IIIb chord has three of the five notes of the pentatonic scale. At two frets below the tonic fret, you can use the A and B pedals to toggle between the VIIb and IIIb chords, the "blue note" chords.

As far as the pentatonic scale goes, there is no reason to fear knowing it. If you know a blues run, chances are it is simply a pentatonic scale run. So now you know what it is called, big deal. You don't have to know what it's called to use it in playing blues. It's a kind of analysis after the fact. It doesn't hurt, and might help. The knowledge about blues boxes also came after the fact. The first time I ever say anything about them was in guitar magazines analysing the blues boxes B.B. King and other top blues guitarists used. At first it was considered sort of advanced stuff. But later it started turning up in beginner instruction books. B.B. King knew all about his boxes and how to use them. But it took some guitar blues geeks to start analyzing them and drawing them out so they could be learned easily. It doesn't make you a bad blues player to study blues guitar boxes, and it doesn't make you a bad blues player to study the pentatonic scale. Wait...how did I mean "bad" in that sentence? Umm...it doesn't matter. You can take it either way.

[David Mason]

Here are the links for the Buddy Emmons box pattern articles:
http://www.buddyemmons.com/Pockets.htm
http://www.buddyemmons.com/MinorPockets.htm

Regarding microtones, I have five books on Indian music, three by foreigners (us) and two by Indians. The musicology types have all sorts of "systems" by which they claim Indian music is organized - there are 22 notes to the scale, there are 72 notes to the scale, the South Indian System is a precursor to the North Indian system, etc. etc. The Indians are crystal-clear about it - the microtones you choose vary according to who your teacher was, where you were born, the time of the day, the mood of the raga, the planting season, the crickets chirping in the background. This is so patently offensive and/or incomprehensible to a scholar raised on Bach (beer-chugging, improvising, happy ol' Bach) that it zips right by them - I think the same can be said of "da blooze" & their microtones?

Someone, somewhere (you guys wear me out) said something disparaging about beginners playing a single note up and down a scale - anyone who has heard ferocious lapslider Debashish Bhattacharya playing 16th note solos at 180bpm, up and down the strings, knows better that this (Sliff, I know you know). As famed Berklee instructor Mick Goodrick says in his book "The Advancing Guitarist":

"The point that I'm trying to make (which may be one of the most important points in this book) is that position playing is not even half of it. Equally as important as position playing is playing up and down one string... a lot of guitarists today know about position playing, but very few know about playing up and down one string. Not surprisingly some of those few who do know are among the very best guitarists on the planet these days."

He doesn't name names, but at the time the book was written I would think he had been talking about Jim Hall, Jimi Hendrix, and John McLaughlin. Two of Goodrick's students who obviously took this instruction to heart were John Scofield and Pat Methany.

Steel guitarists will also greatly benefit from learning to play their favorite licks starting on any string as the root, going across, going up and down. Sure it's hard! Is it bad for you? Don't be afraid to move the bar - it can't hurt you. Stop on any (& every) note within the lick, slide up to the next note, then complete the lick in the new position - of course it's hard... learn one lick really, really, really well, this way, and you'll know the whole neck. (easier said then done, O.C.)

And here's the real point:

I goofed around a little last night and found a few more patterns

Funny how THAT works.... oh well, back to typing, it's easier than practicing or dog forbid, thinking.

[Ben Jones]

It's not "minor scale stuff", not really, because it goes over major chord changes. The fact that you can use the notes at the 12th fret is evidence of that - the 12th fret sounds totally wrong in the key of E minor.

-your (very elegant) diagram was not a minor scale? the blues box isnt a minor scale? But ive just been told over and over that it is??!!

David, pardon my ignorance but what does IIIb mean?
III is the 3 chord yes? major yes? and the "b" is for flatted? *head explodes....

I can rock bOb's pattern to the moon and back if i stay off strings 10,9 and 8...and forget that C pedal, maybe next year.
Bringing that A in and out is THE bend we guitarists are used to mst tho.

Ungh, theory is such a drag.....I just wanna rock, not go back to calculus class.
The word "root" I can handle, "mixolydian" i cannot.

so what's the final word, blues box a minor scale or what?

[David Doggett]

Here's a new thread posted by Johan Jansen with a link to some great blues steel: http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/posting. ... e&p=924893
Lots of single string work. You can't put that in a small box. It's the whole neck.

[b0b]

So the humor attempt at my expense sort of fell a little flat. And you wonder why I feel kind of dissed at times?

No humor or offense was intended, Jim. I'm sorry that you took it that way. I hadn't seen your previous reference to "root".

[David Doggett]

Ben IIIb is the major chord 3 half-steps (3 frets) up from a root major chord. I am using the number system that numbers the chords according to their root among the 8 notes of the major scale. In the key of C, the 3rd note of the scale is E, so an E chord is III. In blues in C, Eb is a pentatonic scale note, and that note is used as the root of this very commonly used blues chord.

In E the IIIb is G. On guitar in E blues, put a barre behind the E chord and move it up 3 frets. That is a main chord, even in so-called 3 chord blues (which would make it 4 chord blues really). When you are playing in E on guitar in the box with the nut as its lower boundary, that 3rd fret is sort of the upper boundary of that box and a major part of the pattern in that box. The same is true for hammer-ons and pull-offs when playing open near the nut on E9 steel (or slide guitar or lap steel with an open E tuning).

In other keys on E9, that chord is found either 3 frets up from the tonic (the tonic is the root chord for the key) with no pedals, or 2 frets down with the A and B pedals down.

The question of whether the pentatonic scale is major or minor is complicated. The pure blues scale is neither one, it is it's own scale. Because it uses the 3b of the major scale (notice I am using Arabic numerals for the notes of the scale, and the corresponding Roman numeral for the chord using that scale number as a root), which is a minor third, and the characteristic note of the western minor scale, it seems like the pentatonic scale is minor. But blues usually mix the pentatonic scale with either the western major or minor scales. Some blues are modal, which means the 3rd tone is avoided, especially in chords (called power chords), so that they are neither major or minor. But many other blues songs use both the pentatonic 3b and the major scale 3. They will slide from the 3b to the 3, and in the tonic chord will use the 3, which makes these songs major blues. Other blues songs don't use the 3 at all, and for the tonic use the minor chord (example Em or Am), and those are minor blues songs. In those you slide from the 2 to the 3b. Many of them also use the IVm chord instead of IV. But they all have the major for the V chord, usually V7.

In a major blues song, you can use the tonic minor chord position for a single string picking pattern, because it has the 3b. But if you hit that full minor chord, it will sound wrong, because other instruments will be playing the major chord. That's what is called playing the minor pattern over the major chord.

It seems complicated to write this all out, but if someone played these things to you, you would recognize the sounds instantly, and probably recognize the box pattern on regular guitar. One way to look at scales and chord names, and number systems and theory is that it is all simply words we invented to communicate verbally or on paper about stuff that we otherwise know as sounds in our head and as patterns on our instruments. It's all the same stuff.

[Jim Sliff]

Thanks b0b.

FWIW even though my tuning is really different, this thread HAS given me some ideas about how to visualize the fretboard. It'd still be, IMO, a really nice educational tool for beginners if someone developed an intro course aimed at guitar players, that focused on the "box" idea and served as a "launching pad". It would undoubtedly draw in more guitar players and get them over the initial "sensory overload" hump of strings, pedals, levers, and instruction based on scales, moving chords, modes etc.

Visualization and sound - not theory. "Instant Steel" or whatever you want to call it. Sure, it's a shortcut and not very "deep" - but it's a starting point guitarists can relate to, and that's the whole idea.

[b0b]

Ben: technically, I suppose it's a minor scale. But most blues is in major keys. Early in this topic, I mentioned that all of the notes (and some in-betweeners) can be used at one place or another in blues.

"Regular" (non-blues) songs in minor keys follow very specific rules of harmony. When we translate those rules to steel, we get a different set of positions than what we would use to play against a major key blues song.

In blues, we can include the straight across major positions (frets 5, 7 and 12 in E, with the second string lowered to D) at appropriate places in the chord progression. These positions are extensions of the traditional bottle-neck slide positions, expanded into pentatonic (5 notes per octave) scales. The E9th is a pentatonic tuning.

Most guitarists moving to pedal steel have played bottleneck or lap in E major. The E9th tuning adds two more notes per octave: D and F#. In slide guitar box diagrams, these notes are seen two frets above and below the chord's fret. On pedal steel they are included at the chord's fret.

Blues is a sublime mixture of major and minor modes, of pentatonic, diatonic and chromatic scales. It's almost fractal in nature: the closer you look, the more you see, but its beauty and emotional power is evident at every level.

[Ben Jones]

David Ive read that and will re-read it and try and absorb it and relate it to your previous post about the IIIb. Thanks for posting it. I couldnt get the link you posted to play, my realplayer is wacked

bOb wether you meant to be funny or not, I saw and appreciated the humor in your post..course i wasnt mentioned by name. but Jim we gotta keep our sense of humor about this, the differences between the way steelers and guitarists think are quite funny at times. We are mucking about in their world both in terms of their instrument and thier theory and notation and instructional materials and all that. we must look like uncooth barbarians at a tea party to them..haha. "Me want blues box! Now! no understand theory...grunt" teehee Best we tread lightly, learn what we can and have a few laughs along the way. THEN we can break into their liquor cabinet and clog their toilet.

In the meantime Jim, heres the next box above the one I posted before. I dont know if this stuff works with your crazy tuning or not but you see the wedge shape going up the neck I was talking about before:

Key of A
.....5...6...7...8...9...10
4..................X........X
5..................X.... ...X
6........X........X........
7........X................
8....X....................

[b0b]

Ben, the piece that you're missing in your box diagrams is the 2nd string. In pitch, the 2nd string falls between the 5th and 4th. Before moving the bar after picking the 5th string (ascending), try a note on the 2nd string instead. It's very useful in all kinds of runs.

The sacred steel tunings place a D string between the B and E strings. On E9th, that same idea is on the 2nd string. Don't avoid it - it's an essential part of the "box".

[Ben Jones]

you steel players are cruel for putting that lower string above the higher ones

That 2nd string above all others, not just in blues but country too has been the most difficult for me to incorporate into my playing. even the ninth string gets more love. I'll work on it tho. right now when i just tried going there it was kinda like "well i might as well be on string 4 for this..." maybe its more useful for those roll style licks? I cant make it fit unless i lower it.

[David Mason]

One thing is that blocking is most important, especially with those top two, out-of-place strings - you just have to make sure those notes and the ones before and after them STOP playing when they've had their moment. This is held to be somewhat less important in C6th tuning, EXCEPT: as Jim said, when you try to draw up a "box" pattern using adjacent strings, it comes out as a diagonal kind of line. This is O.K. for certain licks (Easley!) but it's only when you start skipping strings that you run into the "normal" 4th intervals that guitar players like so much. In C6th tuning there's a whole world of stuff happening on non-adjacent string pairs using pedal 7 to switch between 4th and 5th intervals (strings 6+4, 5+3, 4+2, 3+1), but you have to block out the strings in between or you'll unleash the choir of Hades.

[b0b]

you steel players are cruel for putting that lower string above the higher ones

That 2nd string above all others, not just in blues but country too has been the most difficult for me to incorporate into my playing. even the ninth string gets more love. I'll work on it tho. right now when i just tried going there it was kinda like "well i might as well be on string 4 for this..." maybe its more useful for those roll style licks? I cant make it fit unless i lower it.

Yes, you have to lower it to D a lot in blues. I actually played with it tuned to D for over a decade.

Its position allows you to play faster leads when you are alternating thumb and finger. Try this with the 2nd string lowered to D: [tab]1 _______________________
2 ___F____F____F____F____
3 _______________________
4 _T________T__________T_
5 _____T__________T______ etc. [/tab]
It's a very common phrase found in many rock and blues solos. It's harder to play if the strings are "in order" because you would have to 1) use another finger or 2) cross the thumb over.