The Composite Blues Scale
BY JEFF MCERLAIN
Jeff McErlain is a New York City-based guitar
player, producer, songwriter, and educator. He
performs regularly in NYC and abroad with
his trio and blues band. Jeff has a number of
instructional DVDs available at TrueFire.com,
and he is a featured instructor for the National
Guitar Workshop. Jeff's latest CD I'm Tired is
available on i Tunes or at jeffmcerlain.com.
CHOPS: Intermediate
THEORY: Advanced beginner to
intermediate
LESSON OVERVIEW:
• Combine major and minor
pentatonic sounds
• Develop fingerings for the
composite blues scale
• Add chromaticism to your
blues licks
of A–B–C–C#–E–F# and its formula is
root– 2–
3–3– 4–6. This scale now includes
the natural 3rd (C#).
The real fun starts when we mix the two
scales together, as we see in Fig. 1. This
is called the composite blues scale. Whoa!
That’s a lot of notes to think about. Here we
have A–B–C–C#–D–E%–E–F#–G, or root–
2–
3–3– 4–
5–5– 6–
7. That’s nine notes.
Before you get overloaded, let’s take a clos-
er look at all the harmonic goodness going on
inside here. First, we have a series of half-steps
that go from B to E, and that’s where the fun
lies as we can see in Fig. 2. We can use this
same technique to create a classic-sounding
blues turnaround, as shown in Fig. 3. To get
a jazzier sound, I used all the half-steps found
in this scale to create a classic bop lick with a
bluesy twist as seen in Fig. 4.
44 &
oeoeoeoe oeoe b oe n oe
oeoeoeoeoe oeoe b oe n oe oeoeoeoeoe OE
5789
5
78
45678
˙
4
57
4567
578
As we know, a standard blues progres- sion is made up of three dominant-7th
chords—the;I,;IV,;and;V.;This;month,;we’re
going to look at some cool ways to spice
up the I chord. To make things easier, we’ll
stick to the key of A, so our I chord will
be A7. A quick and simple way to spice up
that chord is by mixing two very familiar
scales, the major and minor blues scales. If
we were to look at the formula for this scale
it would be root–
3–4–
5–5–
7.
What makes this scale very cool is the
added
5 or “blue note.” The
5 adds some
chromaticism to the scale, which it doesn’t
have otherwise. A great sound is to really play
up the chromaticism in a lick. I really love
the rub and tension those notes can add to a
line. If you haven’t spent some quality time
with the blues scale, I suggest you do!
An A7 chord is spelled A–C#–E–G or
root– 3–5–
7. If we look at our minor blues
scale we can see that it does not contain a
very important note of the chord, the natural 3rd or C#. Although the scale sounds
great, it does have some room to expand. A
simple option to play over the A7 chord is
the A major blues scale. This scale consists
˙
Fig. 2
44 &
ÍÍÍÍ
‰oeb oeoeoe oen oeoeoeoeoen
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
oeoeoeoe b oeoeoe ˙™
ÍÍÍÍ
ÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ
˙
75
76
7
5
85
44 &
A7
‰
oej oe oeoeoeoeoeoe b oeoe
F9 E9
oe n fi
oe
oeoe
#
j oeoeoe oeoeoe n
Ó
3
3
3
B¨ 7 A7
oeoeoefi
oe
oeoe #j oeoeoe bb oeoeoe n ˙˙˙
6
6767878
7
7
5
6
7
7
7
8
8
6
7
7
5
6
6
6
6
7
5
5
6
44 &
A7
OE
oeoeoeoeoe oeoe oe fioej oeoeoeoe ˙
Ó
5
57
578
8
10
47456
6
