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Well, that was certainly an interesting experience, @AAstrum . Those guys probably walked away chuckling about the rabbit hole they just sent you down. Mind you, it’s certainly not a bad rabbit hole, it’s just not the fastest route to learning to solo.
So, let’s start with your actual question as I really have no idea what those guys intent was when they told you to learn the Bb blues scale.
First, the Bb blues scale is simply the blues scale in Bb. Some people would call it the key of Bb, but to me that’s confusing. All blues scales are a derivative of the minor scale, which means they are not the identifier of their key, but their relative major “owns” the key. So, this is the key of Db. The notes in Db would be Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db. The major pentatonic would be Db, Eb, F, Ab, Bb, and back to Db. You leave out the 4th and the 7th degree.
Now, you can take those same notes and create the minor pentatonic scale, just start from the relative minor, which is the sixth degree. So, the minor pentatonic would be Bb, Db, Eb, F, Ab, and back to Bb. If you are one of those who like to memorize “formulas”, you would leave out the 2nd and the 6th, which are the same 2 notes, just in a different degree (position) when you start counting from the 6th. That’s what I meant above about “confusing”. I can derive all this from my head because I understand all the different scales, yes, including modes, as a modification of major scale. Truth is, all music theory is simply a way to define the music so we can talk about it. It isn’t the music itself. Many times, you can explain the exact same piece of music in a number of different ways.
So, back to the Bb blues scale. We have the Bb minor pentatonic, Bb, Db, Eb, F, Ab, Bb. Now, if you stick in the note between the 4th and the 5th, counting from the relative minor, you get the “blues scale”. Now, don’t get confused, because we left out the 2nd. So, what we have is 1 (Bb), 3 (Db), 4 (Eb), 5 (F), 7 (Ab), So, the Bb (minor) blues scale would have an E added, or “Fb”. So it would be Bb, Db, Eb, E, F, Ab.
But, since music doesn’t have any “real” rules, there can be a blues “major” scale. That would be the same thing as we just did using the Bb major scale. Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A, Bb. The major pentatonic would be Bb, C, D, F, G, Bb. Now the note you stick in counting from the relative major is between the 2nd and the 3rd, which would be C#/Db. Again, it’s the same note, just starting the count from a different note. (To verify this, count from the relative minor, G, which is the 6th. G (1), A(2), Bb (3), C (4), D (5), Eb (6), F (7), G (1). So, the Bb major blues scale is Bb, C, Db, D, F, G, Bb. (Technically, this would be the blues in G, or the G minor blues scale, but that doesn’t stop people from playing the “G minor blues” using the Bb as the tonal center and calling it the Bb major blues scale.)
Now, the real key is not finding out what the Bb blues scale is. Because if you were playing the Bb minor blues scale, you would only solo over the keys of Bb minor, Bb major and Db major. If you count minor and major scales and leave out the modes, you have 24 keys. So that leaves 21 keys you couldn’t solo in.
Of course, if you learned enough music theory to know what the “Bb blues scale” was as (opposed to simply knowing the 6 notes) then you would know how to solo over any key. And, that, I believe is what they meant.
My suggestion would be to take the fretboard wizard class and put effort into the Wednesday scale lessons. Eventually, you will understand all the above explanation. But the truth is, you could become a great soloist without ever understanding music theory. But you’d have trouble playing with the jazz players if you didn’t know music theory, but even in that situation, it is possible.
I hope I helped rather than adding to your confusion. I will do my best to clarify if you have further questions.
MG 😀