Jazz Guitar Scales For The Minor Blues

A guitar lesson by Matthew Warnock

In part 1 of this this jazz guitar lesson we talked about minor blues chord progressions. In part 2 we'll talk about the guitar scales you can use to improvise over a minor blues.

These scales are not meant to be a conclusive summary of all the scales one can use over these chords. Instead they are merely a starting point to allow us to outline the different chords found in the standard minor blues chord progression, without moving your hands all over the neck.

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Bars 1-3 and 7-8

This example contains a common fingering for the C melodic minor scale (1 2 b3 4 5 6 7), and for our purposes will be used over the Cm7 chord found in bars 1-3 of the basic minor blues progression.

Though some instructional books advise us to use the Dorian mode over m7 chords within a jazz context, the melodic minor scale is preferred by many jazz musicians when outlying a tonic minor chord. Since the scale contains a raised seventh, there is always a touch of the V7, G7, chord heard within this scale, which allows us to have a sense of tension and release within our lines without using subs or alternative scales/modes.

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Bar 4

The following scale can be used to outline the C7alt chord found in bar four of the minor blues progression. This scale is often referred to as the altered scale (1 b9 #9 3 b5 #5 b7), as it outlines all of the alterations that a dominant seventh chord can take.

Since the altered scale is built off of the seventh mode of the melodic minor scale, we can simply take the C melodic minor scale from the first example and shift it up by one fret to Db, which outlines the C altered scale. This allows us to play the first four bars of a minor blues while only moving our fretting hand up by one fret.

C altered scale = Db melodic minor scale

Bars 5-6

We can now move onto bar five of the minor blues, the Fm7 chord, while keeping our fretting hand centered on the eighth fret. Here we can use the F Dorian scale (1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7) over the Fm7 chord.

The use of the Dorian scale instead of the F melodic minor scale helps to keep the Fm7 chord linked to the tonic key of C minor. Since F Dorian contains an Eb, the seventh in F and the third in C, instead of the E natural found in the F melodic minor scale, it is more closely related to the tonic key and therefore is the preferential scale for this chord.

Bars 9-10

For bars nine and ten we can use the G altered (= Ab melodic minor) scale to outline the minor ii-V progression. Notice that even though this scale is lower on the neck than the previous three had been, it uses the same fingering that was found in the C and Db melodic minor scales that were used over the Cm7 and C7alt chords.

Bars 11-12

The last scale we will examine is the C melodic minor scale starting on the third fret of the fifth string, which is in the same position as the G altered scale listed above. This scale can be used for the Cm7 chord in bar 11 as it is in close proximity to the G altered scale which allows for a smooth transition between these two bars.

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