The Pentatonic Scale
The most common scale used in Blues guitar playing is the minor pentatonic scale. Pentatonic means five tones, so in practical terms this means that once you have played five different notes the scale repeats itself an octave higher than you started. The diagram below shown the A minor pentatonic scale in the 5th position.
Play the scale as indicated here. It should sound familiar to you.
Now try starting at the highest note and playing down through the scale.
The next step is to play the scale ascending and descending as shown here. Try to get a smooth, even sound.
To help develop your picking it is a good idea to practice playing each note twice, alternating down and upstrokes of the pick. This is called alternate picking.
Playing a triplet on each note is a very good way to develop the alternate picking technique because each note starts with an opposite stroke to the last one. This means you should be equally comfortable playing any note with either a downstroke or an upstroke.
