Practice

Guitar only. Every fret number here is worked out on standard guitar tuning (E A D G B E). The shapes and the CAGED letters attached to them depend on those intervals, so they do not transfer to bass, ukulele, mandolin, or an alternate tuning.

Blues Scale Shapes on the Fretboard

This page is about where the blues scale lives on the neck — which boxes, which string, which fret. The blues scale is the minor pentatonic with one note added, the b5, so it does not introduce a sixth shape: it reuses the same five pentatonic boxes with one extra dot inside each. Below: the five box windows, the exact position of every b5, and how the note is played.

Looking for which scale to play over a blues rather than where to put your fingers? That is a different question — see best scales for blues, which compares the blues scale with the two pentatonics and Mixolydian over a 12-bar.

One added note, not a new shape

Spell the two scales side by side and the relationship is obvious:

  • Minor pentatonic — 1 · b3 · 4 · 5 · b7  (five notes)
  • Blues scale — 1 · b3 · 4 · b5 · 5 · b7  (six notes)

The blues scale adds the b5 and removes nothing. Every note of the minor pentatonic is still there, in the same place, so the five box windows are unchanged — the b5 simply appears inside boxes you already know. If those boxes are new to you, start with the five pentatonic shapes, then come back here.

Box CAGED shape E blues frets A blues frets
1E-shapefrets 0–3frets 5–8
2D-shapefrets 2–5frets 7–10
3C-shapefrets 4–8frets 9–13
4A-shapefrets 7–10frets 12–15
5G-shapefrets 9–12frets 14–17

Those are the pentatonic windows, unchanged. Boxes overlap by about two frets, and after box 5 the chain wraps back to box 1 an octave higher.

Where the b5 lands — E blues on the neck

In E the b5 is Bb (the same pitch as A#), sitting between the 4th (A) and the 5th (B). Here is E blues across the first fifteen frets, high E string at the top: @ is the root, * is the added b5, o is any other note of the scale.

E BLUES  (@ = E root,  * = b5 blue note,  o = other scale tone)
  e |@--o-o*o--o-@--o
  B |o--o-@--o-o*o--o
  G |o-o*o--o-@--o-o*
  D |o-@--o-o*o--o-@-
  A |o*o--o-@--o-o*o-
  E |@--o-o*o--o-@--o

Delete every * and you are looking at the E minor pentatonic grid exactly as it appears on the pentatonic shapes page. Within the first twelve frets the b5 turns up once on each string — six positions in total — and every one of them falls inside at least one box, so none of them is stranded in the gaps between shapes.

The b5 in each of the five boxes

Reading the grid above box by box, in the key of E:

Box CAGED shape Frets (E blues) b5 inside the box
1E-shape0–3A string, fret 1 · G string, fret 3
2D-shape2–5G string, fret 3
3C-shape4–8Low E string, fret 6 · D string, fret 8 · High E string, fret 6
4A-shape7–10D string, fret 8
5G-shape9–12B string, fret 11

A box catches one to three b5s rather than a tidy one per string, and that is simply arithmetic: the note repeats once every twelve frets on a given string, while a box window is only four or five frets wide. Box 3 is the richest — three of them, including the pair on the two E strings at the 6th fret.

In any other key, move the whole picture. A blues is the same table shifted five frets up (box 1 at frets 5–8, its b5s on the A string at fret 6 and the G string at fret 8), and so on around the neck.

The rule that saves you memorising any of it

You never have to learn a sixth shape or a table of frets, because the b5 has a fixed address inside the scale you already know: it is one fret above the 4th, and one fret below the 5th. Both of those are pentatonic tones sitting in every box.

So the working method is: find a 4 in the box under your hand, step up one fret, and you are on the blue note. In E, the 4th is A and the 5th is B — the b5 is the single fret squeezed between them. This holds in every key, every box, and every tuning, because it is a statement about intervals rather than about fret numbers.

How the blue note is actually played

Pass through it

The b5 is a passing tone. It wants to move, so slide or hammer through it on the way to the 5th (or back down to the 4th) instead of parking on it. Held long, it stops sounding bluesy and starts sounding wrong.

Bend into it

Fret the 4th and push it up a semitone. That approach — arriving at the blue note from underneath rather than fretting it cleanly — is where the vocal, crying quality comes from. See bending technique for the mechanics.

The 5 → b5 → 4 descent

Three chromatic frets in a row on one string, walking downward. It is the most recognisable blues fragment there is: in E it is the G string at frets 4, 3 and 2 — inside box 2, straddling its overlap with box 1.

Use it sparingly

One well-placed b5 per phrase transforms a pentatonic lick. Four of them in a row turns a solo into a chromatic exercise — the note earns its effect from being rare.

Why the blues scale has no relative twin here

The pentatonic pair has a twin relationship you can lean on: every minor pentatonic is its relative major pentatonic, three frets up. The blues scale, as this site names scales, has no such partner — there is one blues scale per root, defined from the minor side, so there is no major counterpart to flip to and no second numbering to learn.

If you have met the "major blues scale" elsewhere — the major pentatonic with a b3 added — it is the same six pitches read from the relative major root, in the same way the two pentatonics relate. The six notes of E blues (E · G · A · Bb · B · D) and the six notes of the G major blues scale are one set. The shapes on the neck are identical; only the note you treat as home moves.

Shapes here, scale choice next door, then diagrams in your own key.