moving from E blues to more alkward keys

fguihen

ive been playing almost exclusively in E blues for the last while and tried learning a song in B blues scale for Thrill is gone. The chords are easy to work out, but when i try to do some lead over it or blues riffs im lost.

If i dont use a capo on the 7th fret, and play standard blues patterns and licks, im a little lost. does anyone have any tips for moving to not so standard blues keys ( keys that are not E or A)

-=al=-

just move the e blues pattern down to B

work out what notes are in the scale and work from there, i hardly ever use that many patterns to remember scales, just gime the ntoes of the scale and i can go from there, once u know the notes on the fretboard, it makes all this stuff 100 times easier

leninbenjamin

make yourself a CD/playlist with a song for each different key. learn to improvise over it by just moving the shapes up/down the corresponding number of frets. wash, rinse, repeat until comfortable in any key.

p.s. if you actually do this and put the proper time into you will end up hating every single song you. that's when you know you've done enough

mardybumbum

Well for blues in B I would use the chords B7,E7 and F#7. Then for soling, use the Bminor pentatonic and add a flattened fifth, which would be an F natural. So you end up with the notes B,D,E,F,F# and A

Hope this is some help!:D

georgelowden

chords B m - Em - G 7 - F # ........ the { F# could be F # 7th}

6th string A -B
5th string D- E- F-F# .....makes a pattern ,

4th string A-B
3rd string D-E-F-F#

2nd string A-B
1st string D-E-F-F#

root =B

Voodu Child

Re-learn your five pentatonic shapes, but pay special attention to the root note within each shape.

Most magazines or books (or internet sites) that show you the shapes will colour in the root notes in dark or something. Just focus on them when you're learning the shapes so you always know where you are in relation to a root note.

Example: there's minor pentatonic shape 1:



So just move the shape so that the red notes are on B and you're in B minor pentatonic.

NoQuarter

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dazberry

Well I learned the pentatonic scales a bit differently - in my general confusion and trying to figure out what the hell was going on I started with the minor pentatonic, and learned 2 shapes that I call the right shape and the left shape respectively:

1. Right:

2. Left:

3. With these 2 shapes, I had to adjust the patterns for the notes that fall onto the bottom 2 strings:


With the first 3 "rules" I was able to play the scales linearly up and down the fretboard which is pretty limited - so really I needed to figure out where the root notes were. So I figured it out this way

4. Root Notes in 3 chord shapes
3 Roots - Major Bar chord

2 Roots - Major "A shape" barred

1 Root - Relative Minor barred

Note: These chords are guidelines for the mind, they're not necessarily correct to play, but it was to help me orientate myself on the fretboard.

This ended up giving me something like this:


With the exception of the last image - I never mentioned key/modes here - so I find it a little easier to work in different keys.

But there's still more work in getting the remaining modes down, using the same techniques, but what I've found is that I know all the boxes but never actually learned them - because each set of left/right shapes generally cover 2 standard boxes - and so the boxes sort of compliment what you're doing but you're not stuck in them.

Anyway, that's how I worked it - doesn't mean I can do more than noodle a few notes from time to time - but this really got me out of rut - so if it works for anyone else I'd be delighted.

D.