Please visit the link below to steviesnacks.com where you will find the excellent "5 essential blues boxes" document.

Link to Steviesnacks.com for 5 Essential Blues Boxes

Here are some diagrams that might help you to learn where all the notes are on the Fretboard.

Tip: If your browser does not show the images very clearly, click on them to open them at full size in a new window.

I thought it might be useful to post a list of some Blues books and dvd's that you might want to look at. I have chosen a few from Amazon, but if you prefer to buy elsewhere then I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding them.

If you've ever wondered when you should be playing Major or Minor scales then this tip might help to put a bit of sparkle in your solos.

For a standard 12 bar blues progression of (I - IV - V), I recommend the following approach.

Whenever the (I) chord is playing, try to use the Major blues scale of the key you are playing in. Although you can play minor over the (I) chord, I think it sounds better to play the Major Scale. If you listen to BB King for example, you will hear a lot of the Major scale being played over the (I) chords.

For chords (IV) and (V), you should definitely stick to playing the Minor Blues or pentatonic scales. The combination of switching from Major to Minor really sounds great.

Give it a go and see what you think.

In my previous article Minor vs Major, we briefly explored the use of the Major Scale over the I chord in your standard I-IV-V (1, 4, 5) blues progression. I had a lesson on Friday, during which my tutor revealed some interesting points about Relative Minors - "every Major has a Relative Minor". So what does this actually mean?

Lets assume we are going to improvise over a blues progression of A, D, E. The I chord here is the A, and this is the Key of our Blues song. Now, we could play the A-Minor Pentatonic or A-Minor Blues scale over this I chord, and all would sound great. However, as discussed in my previous article, it is often nice to play Major over this I chord. So we could play our standard Major Pentatonic/Blues shape starting at the sixth string root - A at the 5th Fret.

However, there is an alternative to using this shape. We can use the Minor Pentatonic/Blues shape to achieve the same goal - using A Major's relative Minor, F#. To find the Relative minor of the key we are playing in (A in this case), all we have to do is drop down three semitones to arrive at F#.  F# is the relative minor of A-Major. Confused? Relative Minors are always three semitones below the root. So three semitones back from A is indeed F#. When you play the Minor Pentatonic or Blues shape starting at F# on the sixth string, you are actually playing the notes from the A-Major Pentatonic/Blues Scale.

Lets study some pictures to see how this works. Pay attention to the notes in both diagrams - you will see that the notes are exactly the same for F# in the Minor Pentatonic/Blues as they are in the A-Major Pentatonic/Blues shape.

Fig 1. A-Major Pentatonic scale starting from the 6th String Root at A (5th fret)

Fig 2. The Minor Pentatonic scale, but starting from the 6th String at F# (2nd Fret) - The same notes as above, but the roots are in a different position.