Spice up your blues with Dorian

Jon Bishop wants to spice up your blues with the wonderful world of the Dorian mode. If you feel your playing is stuck in a Pentatonic rut then this feature could provide the refreshing change you’re after.

Welcome to this exclusive feature aimed at putting a bit of extra class into your blues playing using the spicy sound of Dorian mode. Both rhythm and lead guitar ideas are notated and after working through the examples, your blues guitar trick bag should be fully topped up. But first, let’s review what the Dorian mode is and how it functions musically.

If we harmonise the G Major scale in 3rds we get the following sequence of chords: I (Gmaj7) ii (Am7), iii (Bm7), IV (Cmaj7), V (D7), vi (Em7), vii (F#m7 b 5).

As you can see from the above, the second chord is A minor 7 and the scale (mode) that fits with this is A Dorian (A, B, C, D, E, F#, G). Perhaps this all sounds rather complicated, but