Connecting the entire fretboard of your guitar is easy to do. It only takes understanding of 5 patterns. These are the Blues Scale in 5 positions.

 

While there are TONS of scales you can play on guitar, learning how the Blues Scale connects will open up the roads to your understanding of how ALL of the notes on the neck are connected.

 

A simple analogy would be this: If you know the street you live on (the root note). And you know the address of a local club you want to go to (a riff on the 15th fret). It’s easy to find your destination. Because almost all of the streets (scales) in your town (the guitar neck) connect to each other.

 

In fact, there are 1000’s of possibilities of different routes you can take. Some of them may take you quickly, while others might be more of a scenic route. 😉

These 5 positions of the blues scales will work while traveling up or down the neck.

 

You should try to memorize the “SHAPES” of each of these positions, in relationship to each other. That way, like Barre Chords, you can move the set of 5 positions around the neck to any key.

IMPORTANT:

Position 1 below starts on the note A (5th fret on the Low E string).

 

 

Try to memorize all of these shapes.

Then memorize the way they all fit together, and you will be able to move the entire set of 5 positions (as shown in the multicolored image above) anywhere on the neck.

 

These positions can connect all of the fretboard, no matter which note you begin with. To put it another way, if you are playing a blues scale in E on the 12th fret, instead of going UP to the 2nd position, you could go down to Position 5, then down to position 4, etc.

 

Notice how in position 1 and 5, all of the notes of the scale end up on one fret. Think about what that means in regards to octaves. All 5 positions repeat again at the octave (in this case the 17th fret). It also means that you can play position 5 on the 3rd fret, which is just below position 1.

Also notice that you could play the entire blues scale on just one string.

Homework
Next time you are playing a guitar solo using the blues scale, start moving into position 5 (below the scale) or position 2 above it. Notice these are also connected with how the Sliding Blues Scale works!

 

Final Note
Now that you understand The Blues Scale in 5 positions, it will not only create more variety in your solos, but will also help you to connect all of the notes on the neck.