Okay, so here’s an example of how we can apply these ideas to the 12 Bar Blues, lets break it down bar by bar.

Bar one – We open simply on the Dominant pentatonic to play strong sounds to outline the Key.

Bar two – As the ‘Quick change’ happens we play the E dorian pentatonic scale because the 6th and b3 of this scale are chord tones of the A7.

Bar 3 – Back to strong tonic sounds

Bar 4 – Now we have a dominant chord resolution (The dominant chord moves to it’s tonic chord: E7 is the dominant chord in the key of A) so we can use an altered sound to add tension to this resolution. Note – You might want to introduce this scale later in the bar eg beats 3 or 4, it can be difficult to play outside sounds for long periods.

Bar 5,6,7,8, 9 – Here we just follow the dominant chords with dominant pentatonic.

Bar 10 – Here we incorporate the Dorian scale so we can keep thinking in E but outline the A7 (See Bar 2)

Bar 11 – Our first resort to the simple minor pentatonic, this is for simpler voice leading from the chord scale before. Going from E dorian pentatonic in bar 10 to E minor Pentatonic in bar 11 is a simple task.

Bar 12 – For the turnaround we are going to add some tension to our dominant chord before it resolves.