Mastering Pentatonics Intermediate

This module is all about solidifying your knowledge of the five pentatonic shapes, by playing arpeggio patterns through them. This forces you to see different interval patterns, rather than just going to the next note in the scale.

In this module, we'll continue with the arpeggio patterns used in Module 2, but we'll now start playing through all five shapes in quick succession. This means you have to think quickly, relying on your knowledge of the scale shapes.

There are only licks in this module. This is all about using the pentatonic arpeggio shapes in real music situations, getting the notes under your fingers so you can improvise freely with them.

All of the work we've done so far has been on the minor pentatonic and related scales (minor 6th pentatonic, sus2 pentatonic) but pentatonics aren't only for minor tonalities. Now it's time to go major...

Major pentatonic

The major pentatonic is a hugely important scale. You'll hear it in country, southern rock, blues, many traditional folk styles, rockabilly... so much music. You can use it in a regular major tonality (when the straight major scale would be too much "doe a deer") or in a Mixolydian tonality.

As before, it's important to learn the intervals of a new scale, not just the notes. In major pentatonic, we have these intervals...

Root, major 2nd, major 3rd, 5th, major 6th

In the key of A major, that gives us A B C# E F#.

Now, you may have heard about the "3 frets" trick. For example, take an A minor pentatonic lick, move it down three frets and you get an A major pentatonic lick. This is true; what you're doing is moving A minor pentatonic to F# minor pentatonic, which has the same notes as A major pentatonic. It's the concept of relative major/minor... A major is related to F# minor.

BUT, it's best not to think this way. Learn A major pentatonic as A major pentatonic, not as "F# minor pentatonic, but change the root note to a different finger". You'll understand music much better this way, and you'll still understand the relationship between A minor and C major, F# minor and A major, etc.

Major 7th pentatonic

This isn't really a proper scale in the usual sense, as it doesn't contain a root note! It's more an application of an existing scale. If you play the minor pentatonic built on the major 3rd of a maj7 chord, you get all the important flavour notes.

For example, if take the chord Amaj7 (A C# E G#). The major 3rd is C#, so we play the C# minor pentatonic (C# E F# G# B). There's no A root note, but that doesn't matter. We have these intervals...

C# (major 3rd), E (5th), F# (major 6th), G# (major 7th), B (2nd/9th).

For this module, we'll start by working with major triads in each scale shape. The triad is the three notes used to build the major or minor chord. The A major triad is the notes A C# E (root, major 3rd, 5th) and those three notes create the A major chord. These three notes can also be found in the A major pentatonic (A B C# E F#).

This is a good time to introduce INVERSIONS. When we find the triads within each scale shape, they won't all be in the basic "root position", with A at the bottom. Some will have C# at the bottom (first inversion), others will have E at the bottom (second inversion). There are lots of uses for chord inversions, but for now, it's important simply that you understand them...

A C# E (low to high) = root position

C# E A = first inversion

E A C# = second inversion

After that, we'll focus on double stops - playing two notes together as a melodic device. There's nothing new to learn here, but you will need to revisit the old scale shapes and look at them in a slightly different way.

The theme for this Intermediate section has largely been about taking the minor pentatonic and tweaking it to cover slightly different melodic sounds, but still having a pentatonic scale.

This concept is possibly most common in blues. Beginners are often told that they can play a blues solo with just the minor pentatonic (in one shape!) and then they wonder why they can never get that "authentic blues sound". There are two problems with the blues (we're talking about the standard 12-bar blues progression here, not the minor blues, or anything specialised)...

1. The backing is in a major key, the minor pentatonic is (yep!) minor, and the classic blues solo sound is somewhere between the two.

2. The chord changes in a blues progression (moving through the I, IV and V chords) are actually more like *key* changes. For example, in a blues in A major, you're effectively moving through an A Mixolydian tonality, a D Mixolydian tonality and an E Mixolydian tonality. One scale will simply not give you all the cool notes for all three chords.

We're going to examine a way of modifying the minor pentatonic so it works better over a major-key blues, and then we'll transpose it through the chord changes. We're going to create a new scale...

Mixolydian pentatonic

This is basically the regular minor pentatonic but we embellish the minor 3rd by sliding or hammering up to the major 3rd. Using A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) that means we slide/hammer the C up to C#. This gives us a target note (C#) that is in the A7 chord, and the major/minor ambiguity that's so important in the blues.

In the last module, we looked at the Mixolydian pentatonic, a way of including both the minor 3rd and major 3rd within the standard minor pentatonic scale. This makes it sit more comfortable over a dominant chord (such as A7, A9, etc) the harmonic building block of so much blues. It also satisfies the ambiguous "half-minor, half-major" nature of blues melody.

What we need to do now is start learning how to use the Mixolydian pentatonic over chord changes. As we mentioned last time, the chord changes in a 12-bar blues progression are not like regular chord changes. They're more like complete changes of key.

As an example, let's take a really well-known song... the solo section near the end of Stairway to Heaven. The chords are Am-G-F-G, which means you can play right through with just A Aeolian (A B C D E F G). All three chords are formed from the notes of that scale. But if we switch to a standard blues in A, our three chords are A7, D7 and E7. We have a problem immediately. The A7 chord contains a C#, but the D7 contains a C. The A7 contains a G, but the E7 contains a G#.

Although it's possible to play A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) right through a blues in A (our ears hear the clashes as "bluesy") there's no need to. We can extend our melodic vocabulary hugely by learning to transpose the Mixolydian pentatonic through the chord changes.

For this Module, we'll work on switching between A Mixolydian pentatonic (A C-C# D E G) and D Mixolydian pentatonic (D F-F# G A C).

Building on what we did in Modules 7 and 8, let's now add the E Mixolydian pentatonic, allowing us to play through the full 12-bar blues progression, changing scales to match the chords. The principle is the same again... we take a minor pentatonic and slide the minor 3rd quickly up to the major 3rd. This is what we now have, for all three scales...

A minor pentatonic: A C D E G - A Mixolydian pentatonic: A C-C# D E G

D minor pentatonic: D F G A C - D Mixolydian pentatonic: D F-F# G A C

E minor pentatonic: E G A B D - E Mixolydian pentatonic: E G-G# A B D

For the last three modules, we'll look at ways to play "outside" with the minor pentatonic. The simplest explanation of this is that we'll be playing notes that don't belong in the key, creating a temporary feeling of tension and dissonance. The crucial word here is "temporary". If you play outside all the time, it'll just sound wrong. What we have to do is start from a standard phrase, play some outside notes and then return to standard scale notes again.

One of the simplest ways to get an outside sound is simply to play a phrase and then repeat it one fret up or down. This guarantees that most of the notes you play will be outside the current key.

Continuing with what we did in Module 10, we'll now make the patterns more complex.

As we mentioned before, there are many ways of introducing "outside" ideas to your playing. At this level, we don't want to make things too complex, so we're simply displacing whole scale shapes out of key. Even then, there's plenty of room for variation. In Modules 10 and 11, we shifted A minor phrases into Bb minor, giving an almost 100% palette of outside notes.

Another approach is to move a minor 3rd (three frets). Even better, let's do it twice!

Moving A minor up a minor 3rd takes us to C minor, and another minor 3rd takes us to Eb minor. We're then a tritone away from our starting point. These are the three scales...

A minor pentatonic - A C D E G

C minor pentatonic - C Eb F G Bb

Eb minor pentatonic - Eb Gb Ab Bb Db

This is a cool trick, as it gives a gradual shift into outside notes. With C minor pentatonic, two notes (C, G) are unchanged from our original scale, and the F is often part of the A minor tonality. Of the two outside notes (Eb, Bb) even the Eb could conceivably be used in A minor, as it's the flat 5th of the blues scale. But then when we move to Eb minor, everything is outside.

To make things more challenging, though, we're not simply going to take a pattern and shift it up three frets. We're going to play all three scales in the same position.