The BB box on guitar
The compact hybrid position around the root on the B string: major pentatonic with the ♭3 added, and the vocabulary that lives there.
- Notes
- A · B · C · C♯ · E · F♯
- Formula
- 1 · 2 · ♭3 · 3 · 5 · 6
- Notes in the scale
- 6
The BB box is not a new scale so much as a small, high-value neighbourhood. It sits around the root on the B string — the 10th fret in A — and it contains the major pentatonic plus the ♭3, which is to say both thirds a fret apart. That single fact is why so much of the most vocal-sounding blues playing happens in this one position.
It is named for B.B. King, whose playing lived in it, and the name is a fair description of how he used it: not as a shape to pass through on the way somewhere but as an address.
It is deliberately cramped. Three or four frets, mostly on the top three strings, and you are not meant to run up and down it. The idea is to stay put and say something: bend the ♭3 into the major 3rd, hold notes with vibrato, and let the position do the work rather than travelling.
Where it sits on the neck
It is the highest of the five root positions: the window that begins where the root falls on the B string, which in A is the 10th fret. That address transposes without arithmetic — move the blues to G and the same neighbourhood is at the 8th fret, move it to E and it is at the 5th.
Inside the window, the notes worth knowing by name are the A under your first finger on the B string at the 10th, the F♯ on the G string at the 11th, the E on the high e at the 12th, and the C at the 13th fret of the B string. That C is the ♭3. Up on the top two strings the major 3rd is not available as a fretted note at all — the nearest C♯ is down on the D string at the 11th — so you get it by bending the C up a semitone. The signature sound of this box is a consequence of its geography rather than a stylistic choice.
- Root on the A string — the open strings to the 3rd fret.
- Root on the G string — the 2nd fret to the 5th.
- Root on the low E string — the 5th fret to the 8th.
- Root on the D string — the 7th fret to the 10th.
- Root on the B string — the 10th fret to the 13th.
What to play it over
The I chord of a blues, before anything else. Over an A7 it gives you the A, the C♯ and the E as chord tones, adds the B and the F♯ as the 9th and the 13th, and keeps the C as a ♯9. That combination is what a blues guitar over a dominant chord sounds like, whether or not anybody on the bandstand writes the chord that way.
It survives the IV. A D7 takes the F♯, the A and the C as chord tones and the B as its 6th; the only awkward note is the C♯, which becomes D7's major 7th and wants to be bent or passed rather than held.
Over the V it thins out. An E7 wants a G♯ and there is not one in the box, which is why most players drop back to box 1 for that bar rather than trying to make this position cover the whole form.
The common mistake
Treating it as a shape to learn rather than a place to live. It is four frets wide and it does not reward running, so a player who arrives looking for a new pattern leaves in a minute having found nothing. Try the opposite: four bars without leaving the window and without playing more than three notes in a row. What carries the music then is attack, vibrato and how long you hold things, which is exactly what this box is for.
Licks to bring up here
No lick on the site is written this high; they all sit in box 1 at the 5th fret, which is where the material starts. The useful exercise is taking one of them up.