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The blues scale was the first thing they taught me when I got into jazz band in high school. It’s a simple scale to learn, and all the tones sound good over blues changes. The advantage of knowing it, if you’re just starting out with taking improvised solos, is you can focus on creating a solo that’s melodic and dynamic, and you don’t have to worry so much about the chord changes and all the ways you can approach them. So, here’s the blues scale and why it sounds hip over blues changes. In this article, I’ll use Blues in D as our case study.

Stripping away colorful turnarounds and chord substitutions, you basic 12-bar blues is made up of 3 chords: D7, G7, and A7 in the following arrangement:

Comparing the tones of the blues scale with the tones of the chord changes, you might notice some dissonances, and these are what make the blues scale sound hip. Let’s compare each chord with the scale.

D7: The scale contains an F natural, while the chord contains an F sharp, and the scale contains a G sharp, while the key that the D7 belongs to (G major) has no G sharp anywhere near it.

When looking at the scale by itself, it seems that the interval (see “Intervals”) between the first two tones is a minor third (which is true), but there’s another way to look at it in terms of how it interacts with the D7 chord. Since there’s a major third in the chord itself, the F natural is more accurately described as a sharp 9th (E sharp, a.k.a. F natural). The sharp 9th is a color tone that sounds cool over a V7 chord (remember that all blues chords in this example are V7 chords; for more on this see “I-IV-V Harmony, part 2”). I’m not an acoustician, so I don’t know why it sounds cool, but it does.

The G sharp over this chord is a tritone from the root, but also a major 2nd from the 3rd of the chord, so it’s both dissonant and totally consonant. You can use it as a chromatic passing tone between the G natural the A, or you can jump from that tone to a chord tone (more on chord tones in “Building Chord Tones”), or to another color tone like the sharp 9th. With these tones and the root, you can actually arpeggiate a D diminished chord over a D7 chord and everyone will say, “Man that sounds hip!”

G7: The G sharp returns over a G7 chord

The G sharp over this chord could now be considered the flat 9th (A flat), which also sounds hip for acoustic reasons that I don’t understand, but I know it works. Again, you can use it as a chromatic passing tone between the root of the chord and the major 9th, or jump from it to a chord tone or another non chord tone.

A7: That G sharp again, over a chord that contains a G natural, and an F natural in the scale over a chord that’s based on a key that contains an F# (see “Intro to Chords in Jazz”)

Over this chord, the G sharp is the major 7th of the root, though the chord contains a minor 7th from the root. And again, this can be a chromatic passing tone or a color tone, leading either to the root or the minor 7th, or to another chord tone or non chord tone.

The F natural over this chord is the flat 6th/sharp 5th, which is another color tone that provides for hip-sounding dissonances within the melody of your solo.

So what can we conclude from this surgical examination of the blues scale and blues chord changes?

Over any V7 chord, you can incorporate a number of intervals into your solos that are not part of the chords or the keys on which they are based. Namely:

Sharp 9ths
Flat 9ths
Sharp 4ths (tritones)
Flat 6ths (sharp 5ths)
Major 7ths

When you take all that into account, what you arrive at is that all the tones of the chromatic scale can work over blues changes. The important thing to keep in mind is make your solo melodic. It should have an idea that gets repeated here and there, or a small number of ideas that get developed, moved around, turned upside-down and backwards. I can’t tell you what to play in your solo (nobody can; if anyone tries to, they are missing the point), but that’s how you go about soloing. A jazz solo should be like a story. A listener should experience a similar sate of mind as they do when they are listening to a story being told. So, the blues scale is there at your disposal to get started with exploring that all-important concept, and eventually you will start hearing the connections and expanding your playing to other, perhaps more adventurous things.

more articles by Brien Henderson

• A Great Site for Old Music
• Every Musician Should Read This
• Saxes: Work Your Pinkies!, part 1
• Spice Things Up With The Tritone Sub
• Writing Your Own Music: How To Get Started
• Intro to chords in Jazz
• Subdivide. It Pays Off