December 2010 \ Premier Clinic \ Blues \ The Secondary Blues Box: Pattern and Licks from the "Other" Popular Anchor Point

The Secondary Blues Box: Pattern and Licks from the "Other" Popular Anchor Point

Wolf Marshall

Exploring a shape used by Mike Bloomfield and Robben Ford
Premier Guitar December 2010
This shape shares some obvious fingering commonalities with the “B.B. box” and is based on an open A-type barre chord. It has both minor and major connotations.


Mike Bloomfield plays both minor and major 3rds, as well as the 6th, minor 7th, and the flat 5th, in this phrase over the I–V–IV–I chords and the turnaround of a 12-bar blues in A. His home base in this section is the minor pentatonic scale.

Download Example Audio 1...


Robben Ford stresses the flat 5th with bends and a trill figure in this characteristic phrase in D minor. Notice the shift down into the third position during the passage in measures 3 and 4—it’s a common extension of the secondary blues box.

Download Example Audio 2...


This lesson comes from:

Blues Guitar Classics

     

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Video Lesson: Blues Intros and Outros
Video Lesson: Blues Licks, Vol. 4


Comments

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Jerry Dunaway
on 12/09/2010 		I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with this approach. Fortunately for me, my guitar teacher made it a point to show me how the scales can be repositioned on the neck while in the same key (and encouraged me to find other "anchor points" as well). I like to think that this has increased my abilities and versatility tenfold if not more! I RARELY play outside of the pentatonic scale, and by facilitating different anchor points (or better yet, going from primary to secondary positions and beyond within one run), you can increase the potential number of places you can play your riffs (and even make you rethink them and get different approaches). And for the ones who like to "look as cool as possible," transitioning from one anchor point to another (and more?) lets you run all over the place, up and down the neck, and anyone watching who is not a player will be blown away! But again, showmanship aside, looking at the alternate anchor points WILL improve your speed, skill and dexterity, and at the same time give you so many more options as to where you can play the same notes and make you rethink (or better yet, flow naturally and stop thinking) your approach to a lot of your solos!



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