Guitar scales
I'll also show you some extensions to the master scale to add some extra style to your blues, rock and roll and jazz. This set of scales isn't limited by style, and you'll find them being used in just about any style of guitar you can think of, and if you are trying to push the boundaries of your own style, then experimenting with scales usually associated with other styles of music is very important.
Ok, here we go. The master scale is built on the venerable bones of the blues scale, or Minor pentatonic. These are usually learnt in 'boxes', which is ok, but if you learn them this way, you can easily get 'stuck in the box'. You should learn to wander over the guitar fretboard at will, so what I advise you to do is build up from the first box and rather than playing the scale up and down - just 'wander around' in the pattern as a whole. What I really want you to do is start improvising straight off, so if you can manage it, be musical in your scale practice.
Once you can wander around without looking at the chart, move onto the next one and wander a little farther. Repeat until you can cover the entire neck. You'll notice on chart 6 that the last pattern is the same as the first - that because you're now playing an octave up from that pattern, and the master scale keeps on going up with the same patterns. It also goes downwards from the first pattern. The red notes are the Root notes of the scale. If you want to play the scale in 'A' for example, you'd center the root note on the note A (E string 5th fret), and for 'B', you'd center it on B (E string 7th fret) etc. You should learn the notes on the E and A strings by heart.
Blues Minor Pentatonic box 1
