The first part of this course gave you the form and the feel. This part gives you a voice over them, and it starts with as few notes as possible: the five notes of A minor pentatonic in one position at the fifth fret, the box from the first lesson.
The box at the fifth fret
Box 1 covers frets 5–8 and holds twelve notes.
This position covers frets 5 to 8, and every note of A Minor Pentatonic lies under one hand there. Five positions like it cover the whole neck, and this is the first of them.
Why one box is enough
Each of the three chords shares some of its notes with the box. A7 contains A, E and G, D7 contains D, A and C, and E7 contains E and D. So wherever you are in the form, some of the notes under your fingers belong to the chord, and a phrase that stops on one of them sounds finished.
Where each note lands, chord by chord
- land a note of the chord, so a phrase that stops here sounds finished
- your root A, the root of your scale rather than of the chord, and every number on the neck is a degree counted from it
- bend a place to land, a semitone below the chord's 3rd, so bend the string up into it
- pass in your scale but not in the chord, so move through it on the way to a chord tone
- leans a semitone above a chord tone, so it wants to fall onto that tone
Over A7, land on scale degrees 1, 5 and ♭7. C♯ belongs to the chord but not to A minor pentatonic. Over D7, land on scale degrees 1, ♭3 and 4. F♯ belongs to the chord but not to A minor pentatonic. Over E7, land on scale degrees 4 and 5. G♯ and B belong to the chord but not to A minor pentatonic.
Position 5 is drawn once for each chord. Your hand stays in the same place, but the notes worth landing on change with the chord.
A filled dot is a note you can stop on, and the legend says why each one works: most are notes of the chord, and one sits a semitone below the chord’s third, to be bent up into it. The hollow dots are still good to play, but they sound like the middle of a sentence, so move through them and stop somewhere filled.
Two bars to play, two to rest
A phrase is a musical sentence, and the blues gives it a natural length. Earlier in the course the singer took the first two bars of each line and left the last two for the guitar. Now take the first two bars yourself: play a short phrase from the box, stop on a filled dot, and leave the next two bars empty. Then do the same at the start of the next line.
Players have long imitated B.B. King’s economical phrasing, and it is a good model here. Say a little, let each phrase finish, and leave the silence after it alone, because that silence is where a singer or a band would answer.1
The twelve bars, to play over
Band · twelve-bar blues in A · shuffle · 84 beats a minute
A band plays the twelve-bar blues in A, shuffled, at 84 beats a minute: A7, A7, A7, A7, D7, D7, A7, A7, E7, D7, A7, E7.
A band round the twelve bars: drums, bass and the riff from the shuffle lesson. Start a phrase at the top of each line, where the letters are, and leave the second half of the line empty.
Sources
This lesson was drafted with the help of AI, so it may contain a mistake. Its diagrams are drawn by Everyfret’s own software. How Everyfret is made