A# Blues Scale on 5-String Banjo

Play the A# Blues scale on 5-String Banjo with fretboard diagrams that map the pattern across the neck. The Blues scale has 6 notes per octave and belongs to the blues family.

Not one of 5-String Banjo's open strings belongs to A# Blues. Every note of it gets stopped, which at least means the pattern is fully movable — the same fingering carries to all twelve keys.

The minor pentatonic with a b5 "blue note" wedged in — that one extra note adds grit, tension, and a sly, vocal quality. Tough, expressive, and unmistakably bluesy.

Heard in: Blues, rock, jazz, rhythm and blues, and boogie-woogie — Delta and Chicago blues, Hendrix, Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

It has a drum head rather than a wooden top, so notes bloom and die fast.

Each position shows the scale notes and their intervals from the root so you can connect the shape to its sound, hear it with audio playback, and practice it in any register. Movable patterns let you transpose the same fingering to other keys once it is learned.

Once a position is under your fingers, link the A# Blues scale to the chords it harmonizes and to progressions in the key of A# to start improvising and writing with it. Working a scale alongside its chords is the fastest way to make it stick and to hear how it colors a progression.