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.

With just three chords, one scale, and a few simple patterns, you can already spend hours inventing your own original blues. But sometimes you'll want to change the mood. In this lesson, Peter Dugan shows you how to play the so-called "minor blues." By swapping dominant 7ths with minor 7ths and tweaking the harmonic progression slightly, you'll enter a totally new sound world.

Just as you can darken the mood by altering the harmonic progression using minor 7ths, you can also brighten up the mood by basing your scale on major pentatonic. In this lesson, Peter Dugan shows you the elements of the major blues scale and how to create new effects over the original bass progression.

As you can see, the blues can create endless moods and colors with just three chords, but there are even more endless varieties of expression that can be achieved with some simple harmonic inserts taken from jazz. In this lesson, Peter Dugan shows you how jazz players stack and insert ii-V-I progressions within different harmonic structures in order to create different kinds of energy and flavor – and how you can do the same with your blues.