LESSON

Rock

This month Andy G Jones brings you new ideas to spice up your soloing, as he examines the intriguing Relative Minor Blues scale.

Andy G Jones

Brought to you by…

LCCM Where music matters

Michael Landau is one of the most sophisticated and exciting players

CHRIS MCKAY / GETTY IMAGES

This month we’ll examine how we can get a bluesy sound over a diatonic Major scale based chord progression, where the tonic blues scale won’t fit. Diatonic means that the notes used are within the tonic scale - in this case the Major scale.

The solution is to use a Blues scale based on the Relative Minor. For example, if we’re in the key of G Major, the relative Minor is E Minor (a Minor 3rd down from the tonic chord). I didn’t want to commit it to a recording but please try, at least once, to make the tonic Blues scale work over any of the chord sequences here - it’s probably not going to be pretty.