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Speed Metal Blues

March 26, 2019 By Jim Beckwith

(This was taken mostly from my book “Take Control: for

guitar”, available on Amazon)

 

Many rock songs consist of power chords built off of pentatonic

and blues scale roots. This is a style I first became aware of in

the early 70’s when I tried to figure out Black Sabbath songs.

All you do is pick a scale and play power chords built on those

notes. Since a power chord is just a perfect 5th interval and not

a complete chord, you don’t have to worry about those pesky

major and minor chords! Also songs in this style are mostly

played with lots of volume and distortion, so power chords are

plenty huge sounding. Generally the more “normal” the song

is, the more it sticks to pentatonic roots. The more “outside”

tunes add more extra blues notes. As you might guess with a

blues scale having so many options, the only way to keep the

key obvious is to keep hitting the root a lot. This explains why

so many heavy songs are based on E, you have to keep hitting

the root or the song turns into garbage. This means it’s easy to

tell what key the song is in (what note do they keep hitting?),

but a pain to figure out with all the options. Really heavy bands

do this trick with weird scales like diminished, whole tone,

synthetic modes, or whatever perverted  sequence they can

dream up (Slayer). As for soloing, use whatever scale or note

sequence the power chords are built on, based on the root

they keep hitting. If all else fails, the pentatonic scale is your

friend. There are only 12 notes and it has to be one of them!

The diagram below shows an E pentatonic minor/blues scale

written on the 6th string.  The extra blues tensions have an

asterisk beside them. Pick some frets, play them with power

chords and go crazy! Remember to keep hitting the root!

E PENTATONIC MINOR/BLUES SCALE

fret#         string 6 note      * blues tensions

0                     E

1

2                    F#                              *

3                     G

4                    G#                              *

5                     A

6                    A#                              *

7                    B

8                    C                                *

9                    C#                             *

10                   D

11

12                   E

 

 

 

 

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