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32: How Great Blues Guitarists Make The Pentatonic Scale Sounds So Complex · The Guitarjet Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Guitar Jet Podcast, where you'll skyrocket your
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: knowledge of theory, techniques, and fundamentals for guitar. Hey, it's Miles,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the show. Today, I'm going to tell
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  Speaker 1: you how great blues guitarists make the pentatonic scale sound
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  Speaker 1: so rich and complex, despite the scale's simplicity. So it
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: starts with three main things. One, techniques. Two, phrasing. Three, rhythm.
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  Speaker 1: And five... popular blues techniques include sliding, which is where
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: you slide from one note to the next. For example,
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  Speaker 1: if you're in the A minor pentatonic scale, you could
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  Speaker 1: slide from an A note to a C note. Then
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  Speaker 1: you have bending, where instead of sliding to a note
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  Speaker 1: or hammering onto a note, you'll bend in pitch. And
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  Speaker 1: then you have vibrato, which is where you're consistently bending
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  Speaker 1: in and out of pitch, essentially. Then you have hammer-ons
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and pull-offs, which are alternatives to picking, and are also
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: defined as legato. And from there, we have phrasing. Blues
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  Speaker 1: players often play tasty pentatonic scale phrases and level up
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  Speaker 1: their phrasing with, number one, the blues note, which turns
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  Speaker 1: the pentatonic scale into the blues scale, and the blues
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  Speaker 1: note is what we call the flat five, and that
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  Speaker 1: interval is an interval you won't like stay on or
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  Speaker 1: focus on when you're playing the pentatonic scale. It's a
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  Speaker 1: note you use to move from one note to the next.
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  Speaker 1: It's a tension building note. And two is call and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: response blues licks. That would take a whole episode to describe.
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  Speaker 1: And then three is speed. For example, blues players like
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  Speaker 1: Stevie Ray Vaughan or Gary Moore play fast, face-melting pentatonic
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  Speaker 1: scale phrases, and they also incorporate notes from the natural
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  Speaker 1: minor scale and blues scale. Last but not least, great
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  Speaker 1: blues guitarists have great rhythm, they always stay on time,
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  Speaker 1: and they make it easy for their listeners to follow
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  Speaker 1: the beat. That's it for today's episode. Subscribe to the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: show and tell a friend about this podcast, and I
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: hope you have a fantastic day. Thank you so much
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  Speaker 1: for listening.