Running the minor pentatonic up and down between two points teaches your fingers, not your ears. In the next minute, Peter Dugan hands you the five notes through call-and-response, so you learn to actually use them — then adds the one that makes it sing: the blue note.
The blues scale is a simple, yet emotionally potent collection of notes. Rather than thinking of it as a scale to practice in rising and falling motion between two points, Peter Dugan teaches you the scale in a more practical way – with scale degree 1 as the center of gravity. Adding scale degrees above and below 1, Dugan works his way outward to 5 on either side of the key center in C, inviting you to invent your own melodies along the way: first with a single note, then two, then three, and so on until you've incorporated the "blue note" and are comfortable improvising your own blues melodies.
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