Tag Archives: pentatonic

9 Surprising Pentatonic scale secrets on a Blues

Pentatonic Scales and Modern Jazz go hand in hand just like guitar and pentatonic scale do. In this video I am going to try to bring the two together using a 12 bar blues and demonstrating 9 ways you can apply pentatonic scales to this chord progression. The ideas are not only going to be on which scale to use on which chord, but more about finding a series of pentatonic scales that you can use to create other movements on top of the jazz blues.

Pentatonic Scale use on a Blues (without sounding Bluesy..)

The blues is a great progression to explore reharmonizations and super-imposed pentatonic scales. There are a lot of very standard chord changes that can be approached in many interesting ways. Most of the examples are using several scales to demonstrate other ways to move throught the changes, but there are also a few surprising scale choices for a chord here and there.

Content:

0:00 Intro

0:17 12 Bar Blues and -9 Pentatonic Scale ideas from Wes and Others

1:04 Example 1

1:30 Altering the F major Pentatonic

2:33 Example 2

3:00 Wes’ Pentatonic trick applied to an F blues

3:55 Example 3

4:22 Altered Dom7th Pentatonic + A Charlie Parker observation

6:12 Example 4

6:39 The Altered Dom7th and II V I trick

7:37 Counterpoint ideas on a cadence

8:27 Example 5

8:53 Borrowing a bit of Parker Blues and Parallel Harmony

11:04 Example 6

11:31 Borrowing a bit more Parker Blues

12:28 The Tri-Tone II V and it’s Pentatonic

12:49 Example 7

13:15 Minor pentatonic and m6 pentatonic motifs

14:32 Scale ideas that help connect phrases

15:10 Example 8

15:36 Blues sounds and Tri-Tone II V’s

16:44 Example 9

17:11 Lydian Major Pentatonic, the Lydian b7 pentatonic sound

18:29 Using Pentatonic ideas to create melodic concepts and add a story to your solo

18:59 Do you have a great Pentatonic idea? Leave a comment!

19:46 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!

Advanced Pentatonic Ideas you Need for Fusion and Jazz Guitar

The sound of the Pentatonic scale is often associated with certain genres like rock, blues, country and western, but it certainly has it’s place within modern jazz and fusion as well. Most of us come from another genre to jazz and have certain ways of using the Pentatonic scale that is a bit harder to get to work in jazz. This lesson will show you some ways to come up with some more fresh sounding Pentatonic ideas.

All the examples are using E minor pentatonic, because I was in that kind of a mood that day.

Reshaping the Pentatonic shapes

The first example is demonstrating how you can use an alternative fingering for a standard CAGED or two note per string scale fingering.

The new way of playing the scale is using an alternating pattern of 3 and 1 notes per string. The Advantage is that this makes it easier to play for your right hand and also makes it easy to play some of the 4ths intervals within the scale.

You can see in the begining of the phrase in example 1 how I use this.

The fingering is shown here below in example 2:

3 notes per string and a II V I in D major

The 2nd lick is a II V I in D major and the Em pentatonic part (on the II chord) is making use of a 3 notes per string way of playing the scale.

The advantages to playing 3 notes per string with the pentatonic scale are that you get to explore a huge chunk of the neck and that it automatically helps you connect the different two notes per string positions while ascending the neck.

The lick is shown here below in example 3:

 The line is using only the top part of the 3nps pattern since the entire pattern is a bit long.

The 3 note per string verison of the E minor pentatonic is shown here below:

Extending the 2 note per string pattern upwards and downwards

This example is making use of the 3 note per string pattern to make it easier to play faster and more intervallic runs is . Instead of thinking of the scale as a row of notes I am thinking of the two notes per string position with an upwards and downwards extension of one note for each string. 

This gives me two 3 notes per string patterns, but they both have doubled notes since the last note on a string is the first note of the next string.

This can be practical for some types of lines, but the doubled notes can also make it hard to make sense of the melodies you make with these patterns.

The lick is shown here below in example 5:

The “extended” versions of the scales are shown here below:

Making use of these ideas

The ideas I show here are mostly just short glimpses of what is possible with these principles and of course you should sit down and explore them further to see what you can use them for. Probably the first step is that the lick I played or the scale will in some way inspire you to come up with something?

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Pentatonic out of the box

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How to Come up with New solo ideas – Rethink the stuff you already know

It can be difficult to come up with new ideas for your solos, but this video talks about how you can use all of the diatonic triads, arpeggios, pentatonic scales etc and find the right ones to the chord you are playing over. Not only playing just with the arpeggio, but also how to mix it with the other material.

The video has a lot of examples and explanations and also a lot of philosphy on playing over changes, superimposing arpeggios and other things like developing a personal sound and taste.

 

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0:49 The Maj7 and the F Major Scale

1:10 What I will check out

1:48 The Fmaj7 chord and diatonic arpeggios

2.55 Solo using Fmaj7 arpeggio

3:12 How you solo with an arpeggio when learning new ideas

3:53 Arpeggio from the 3rd

4:18 Solo using Am7 Arpeggio 

4:43 Why we don’t really want the Bb in there and C7 doesn’t work

5:46 A 3rd below: Dm7

5:56 Solo using Dm7 Arpeggio

6:31 Arpeggios against another root note and the having an overview of the scale

8:20 Solo using F major triad 9:29 Am triad solo

9:51 Thoughts on making melodies with Am triad vs Fmaj7

11:01 Solo using C major triad 11:23 C major triad and not having the 3rd in the arpeggio.

12:14 Solo using D minor triad

12:32 Finding associations with the different arpeggios and the sound they make

13:48 Quartal Harmony

15:19 Solo using Quartal Arp from G

15:34 DIfferent fingerings and mixing it with other things

16:27 Solo using Quartal Arp from A

16:53 Connecting to the chord, using chord tones

17:28 Solo using Quartal Arp from D

17:46 Emphasizing the intervals in the arpeggio

18:32 Solo using Quartal Arp from E

18:53 Different patterns of the Arpeggio

19:37Other options like spread voicing, drop2 and inversions..

20:14 Pentatonics

20:27 Solo using Dm Pentatonic

20:47 Choosing pentatonic scales for a chord

21:48 Solo using Am Pentatonic

22:13 The “other”Pentatonic scales lesson series

22:48 Shell Voicings – Finding Useable

24:10 Solo using Fmaj7 Shell Voicing

24:51 Solo using Am7 Shell Voicing

25:05 Ways to practice shell voicings in postition and along the neck

26:26 Solo using Dm7 Shell Voicing

27:38 Solo using Em7b5 Shell Voicing

27:55 Compensating for the lack of chord tones in the arpeggio

28:44 What am I trying to do when practicing with these arpeggios

29:26 Sus4 triads and Mark Turner

30:03 Finding useable Sus4 triads

30:38 Difference between Sus4 and Quartal Harmony?

32:02 Solo using Gsus4 triads

32:33 Solo using Asus4 triads 32.49 The sound of the sus4 triad

33:35 Solo using Csus4 triads

33:51 Using the resolution of the sus chord in the melody as well.

34:42 Solo using Dsus4 triads

35:05 Sus4 triads as voicings.

35:33 Using this approach to develop and understand your own taste

37:38 Outro

 

Pentatonic Scale for Altered Chords – Modern Melodic Minor Secrets

The Pentatonic scale is one of the first things we learn. And since it is something we are very familiar with and we can use this to change it a bit and use it for other chord sounds like Altered Dominants or other melodic minor sounds. In this lesson I am going to show you a simple way to make a great pentatonic scale for altered chords and demonstrate how to learn and how to use it.

Creating the Pentatonic scale

I came up with this scale by playing a C minor pentatonic scale and then changing the C to a B. This is shown in example 1, first the C minor and then the B Lydian Augmented pentatonic scale.

As you can see in this example we can easily use that we already know 5 positions of pentatonic scales and that it is easy to “alter” the root so that we make them into or new pentatonic scale.

The Melodic Minor Connection

It is important to also notice that this scale, or 5 note set of notes. Is also a subset of the Ab melodic minor scale:

Melodic minor:       Ab Bb B Db Eb F G Ab Ab Bb

Altered pentatonic:          B        Eb F G            Bb B

This tells us that it is a part of the Ab melodic minor/ G Altered scale and we can also see that it is a good fit for the G7 with an F and a B in there.

Learning The Altered Dom7th Pentatonic Scale

Since the scale is layed out in 2 notes per string patterns across the neck, just like our normal pentatonic scales we can use some of the same exercises to get used to playing the scale

Here are a few excerpts:

The pentatonic scale in groups of 3 notes

The scale in groups of 4 notes:

Finding the chords in the scale

It is important to also have some of the structures under control in the scale. The place you probably want to start is to create some diatonic chords. In Example 5 I have stacked diatonic “3rds” which as you may know yields a lot of quartal harmony.

This exercise is shown here below:

The chords that we get from this are:

  • G7alt Quartal Voicing
  • Eb augmented triad
  • F Quartal Voicing
  • G7 Shell voicing
  • Eb Maj triad (2nd inv)

All of them are quite useful as upper-structures on a G7 altered.

Using the scale as a melody

To demonstrate the way this pentatonic scale works in the context of a II V I I have made three examples.

The first example starts with a pattern of an Fmaj7 (the arpeggio from the 3rd of Dm7). The arepggio is played in a 1 5 3 7 pattern. The line continues with a descending scale run.

On the G7alt the line is simply an ascending run up the scale that is then finally resolved to the 9th(D).

The fact that the pentatonic scale is a bit unusual in the construction makes it possible to get away with using it as a melody in the most basic form as a sort of enriched arpeggio.  

Putting some diatonic chords to use

The 2nd example starts with a Dm7 descending arpeggio. From here it continues with a short scale run. 

On the G7alt the melody is first the G7(#9) quartal voicing and then a Eb augmented triad in inversion.

The line resolves to the 3rd(E) of Cmaj7.

The upper-structure triad

This example makes use of the Eb major triad as an upper structure on the G7alt.

The opening on the Dm7 line is constructed first from an F major triad followed by an Am pentatonic scale fragment. On the G7alt the line is an embellishment of an Eb root position triad followed by a small scale run that resolves to the 3rd of Cmaj7.

Working with these altered or modified pentatonic scales

When you work on using this pentatonic scale it is useful to try to tap into some of all the things you already have in your system with normal pentatonics. There is a lot of tips and ideas already explored on guitar in several styles using pentatonic scales after all. 

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Pentatonic Scales – Melodic Minor – Altered Scale

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3 Pentatonic Scale Exercises You Never Played

It is incredible how wide the range of sounds you can pull from a minor pentatonic scale is! This video is on 3 exercises and some licks showing how to make some great modern sounds with a simple A minor pentatonic scale.

The lesson goal

The material I cover is going to give you some new ideas for what you can play with a pentatonic scale. It will also give you some solid exercises that you can use to get a better overview of the fretboard and help you connect the different scale positions 

I also discuss how I come up with the exercises, This should give you some tips on how you can make your own exercises and develop this material further.

Know your Pentatonic scale

All the examples that  in this lesson are using an A minor pentatonic. You want to know this scale in positions but it is also very practical to know it along the neck on each string. If you want to have an overview of the scale then check out these Downloadable PDF scale and chord charts

The examples that are using a chord progression are all on this II V I in G major:

The first exercise and lick

The first line, that I also play in the beginning of the video is shown in example 1 here below:

The Am exercise that I am using here is a quite random construction. The idea was to take 2 notes on one string and one on the next.

If I do this on the middle string set and the 1st Pentatonic box we get example 3:

This is a great example of how we can take a random pattern and still make it into music. The pattern turns out to be a set of triads, major, minor and sus4.

The way I am using it in the line is in position so that is shown in the last bar of example 3.

The II V I line is using this pattern in box 2 on the Am7 chord. On the D7alt I use an Fm pentatonic scale and play a line consisting of two quartal arpeggios.

The concept behind using Fm over D7alt is covered in this lesson: Soloing over a II V I with Pentatonic scales.

Exercise 2 – Quartal arpeggios 

Another great aspect of the pentatonic scale is that it is very closely related to quartal harmony. One way this is clear is that if you try to build “diatonic thirds” in the scale you get a lot of quartal chords.

The quartal chords are great arpeggios that you can use to get a more open soundin you lines. In example 4 is a simple Am7 line using only the pentatonic scale and one of the quartal arpeggios found in it

The way I play the quartal arpeggio in the first bar of example 4 is using a string skip and two stretches. This is easier way to play it than the one note per string version that we use for chords.

In example 5 I have written out this exercise up the neck

This exercise is great since you are basically playing two different scale positions for each arpeggio in the scale. In that way you are creating a better overview and linking the two positions. 

Since the exercise also requires some stretches you have to make sure you are warmed up playing it it. If you find it hard to play then start higher on the neck to relieve your left hand.

Example 6 here above is a II V I line using a quartal arpeggio from A. On the Am7 I run down to an Am7 arpeggio and then make a simple D7alt line. This resolves to the Gmaj7.

Exercise 3 More ideas from pentatonic chords

Another way to find material and exercises in a scale is to approach it from chord voicings. The last exercise is coming out of playing the minor pentatonic scale as chords. You can think of this as playing the scale on 3 strings at the same time. This is shown in example 7.

If you arpeggiate these chords and add an extra note you get the exercise shown in example 3.

Using this exercise we can easily make some Am7 lines that move around the scale in a new way:

If I take this exercise and use it in a II V I lick we can get something like this:

Here I am chaining together the exercise by using 4 notes from one string set and 4 notes from the next. On the D7alt I am using the triad pair Ab and F#aug. This is a great triad pair for the altered sound. If you want to check out more about triad pairs in the altered scale you can check out this lesson: Triad pairs in the altered scale  on this topic!

Check out how I solo on a standard

If you want to investigate the way I play solos you can check out this lesson on a 4 chorus transcription of my improvisation over the jazz standard There Is No Greater Love



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3 Pentatonic Exercises You Never Played

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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram,Twitter Google+ or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts and releases.

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues

The minor 6th pentatonic scale is a great sound on dominant chords, altered or unaltered. In this lesson I will go over how you can use it on a blues in F and demonstrate how it works for both types of dominants.

I will go over how to find the right scales and how to play them over a blues in one position. Then I’ll discuss the target notes a bit and play an example of a solo using the scale.

If you want a small introduction to the minor 6th pentatonic scale you can check out my first lesson on the subject: Minor 6th Pentatonic scale You can also check out the scale charts on my site:  Min6th Pentatonic scales in positions

Finding a minor 6th pentatonic for an unaltered dominant chord

If we look at the C minor 6th pentatonic scale it is C Eb F G A C. As you can see this scale contains an F7 and also an Am7b5 (since it contains Cm6). That means that we have a scale that works well for that chord.

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues - ex 1

To reverse engineer that: If we have an F7 we can play Cm6 pentatonic over it:

For a dom7th chord without alterations we can use the m6 pentatonic from the 5th of the chord. 

Finding a minor 6th pentatonic for an altered dominant chord

In order to find the m6 pentatonic scale that we need for the altered dominant we should maybe try and associate the scale with a melodic minor scale. If we take a C7alt then you probably knwo that C altered is the same as Db melodic minor, and you can also see that Dbm6 pentatonic is a sub set of Db melodic minor. Furthermore it contains not only the E and Bb, so the basic part of the C7 chord, but also the Gb7 and Bbm7b5 arpeggios that are very good arpeggios for the C7alt sound.

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues - ex 2

This gives us this rule:

For an altered dom7th chord you use the m6 pentatonic scale a half step above the root of the dominant

Pentatonic scales for a blues in F

Now that we can cover the two types of dominants we can assign m6 pentatonic scales to all the chords in the progression, as shown in example 3:

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues - ex 3

If I list the scales we have this:

  • F7 – Cm6 Pentatonic
  • Bb7 – Fm6 Pentatonic
  • Eb7 Bbm6 Pentatonic
  • D7alt Ebm6 Pentatonic
  • Gm7 Gm pentatonic
  • C7alt Dbm6 Pentatonic

In order to get more familiar with the sound of the scale and how it fits with the progression you can go over the exercise that I have written out in example 4. Notice that I can’t start the altered dominants on the root of the chord, so I chose the root of the tritone substitute instead.

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues - ex 4

A m6 Pentatonic Blues Solo!

To demonstrate how I use this material I have written out a short improvised solo that I recorded while making the video.

The solo is staying in the 8th position and is using the positions that I went over in the previous examples.

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues - ex 5

If you want to study the examples away from the video or article you can download a pdf here:

Minor 6th Pentatonics on an F blues

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Using the pentatonic scale as chords

In this lesson I am going to construct some 3 note chord voicings with the pentatonic scale and use those chords to play altered dominants, maj7 and m7 chords.

You can get a lot out of this fairly simple approach to finding voicings for chord situations and it will work in songs with lots of chord movement as well as in modal situations!

Creating chords in the Pentatonic scale

The first thing we need to do is to create the chords in the scale. This is quite simple: You can play the scale on one string for the B, G and D strings and then stack the notes to get the voicings shown in example 1:

Using the pentatonic scale as chords - ex 1

You can use these 3 note voicings as chords whenever you would normally apply the A minor pentatonic scale: Am7, Cmaj7, Fmaj7, Bbmaj7, Dm7, D7sus4.

The examples at the end of this lesson I am demonstrating how to use these voicings on a II Valt I progression in the key of G major.

Now we have one we can use on the Am7, and we need to find one for the D7alt chord.

If you look at the D altered scale (which is the same notes as the Eb minor melodic) scale it is these notes: Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C , D. If there is a pentatonic scale in the Eb melodic minor scale it has to be a note where the diatonic chord is a m7 chord, and the only option is then the F. There we do have F, Ab, Bb, C, Eb which is the F minor pentatonic scale.

With the same principle to make voicings for the F minor pentatonic scale we get example 2:Using the pentatonic scale as chords - ex 2

These voicings can work well as chords for the D7alt.

For the Gmaj7  we have two options. As you may know G major contains three minor pentatonic scales: E, A and B. The Am pentatonic is not so useful since it contains the C, but both E and B will work fine.

I have chosen to use the B minor pentatonic scale because it has an F# so it is better at getting the maj7 sound across than the E minor pentatonics scale.

We get these voicings:

Using the pentatonic scale as chords - ex 3

Now we have voicings for m7, Dom7thAlt and Maj7 chords and can start making some music with the voicings.

Using the voicings on a II Valt I

It is fairly easy to start using these voicings. When we use these voicings we rely on using more chord voicings for each chord, and the sum of the notes will give us a complete picture of the sound of the chord.

You might have noticed that we have a scale for the D7alt that does not contain the 3rd of the chord (F#). There is a way to take a pentatonic scale that does contain the 3rd, but you need to use a minor 6th pentatonic scale, something I made a lesson on here:  Minor 6th Pentatonic scale But in this lesson I chose to use the good old pentatonic scale that we are all familiar with, maybe I can return to the min6th pentatonic scale in later lessons.

In the first example I start out with two different voicings from the Am pentatonic. The second you might actually recognize as the top of a standard Am7 drop3 or a 2nd inversion C major triad. The last voicing on the Am7 can be moved up a half step to become a chord from the Fm pentatonic scale which is what we use for the D7alt. The main thing I think about when making these lines is the top note melody, so the movement of that melody determines which chord I will use.

The D7alt is resolved from the Ab triad to a G6/9 voicing that then continues up to a D triad and finally resolves to a Gmaj7(13) voicing.

In the video I also play through the example slowly adding the root notes under the chords.

Using the pentatonic scale as chords - ex 4

The 2nd example is a fairly straight forward melody ascending up the Am pentatonic scale and again moving to the D7alt by moving up a voicing a half step. The melody on the D7 alt is using two identical voicings a whole step apart, and resolving those to a G6/9 by also shifting the voicing up a half step.

Since three of the voicings we get per pentatonic scale are stacks of 4ths we can very often get away with these half step shifts when changing chord which is a very smooth way to move from one chord to the next.

The lin concludes with a Bm triad that skips down and then ends on a 2nd inversion D major triad.

Using the pentatonic scale as chords - ex 5

Using the two stacks of 4th voicings that are a half note apart across more chords gives us the ability to make a movement and then repeat it on the next chord, which is what I am doing in the final example. The motief is stated on the Am7 and simply repeated on the D7 a major third lower. It is resolved there by shifiting up a half step to a voicing from the Bm pentatonic scale and continues down to a D major triad where it ends.

Using the pentatonic scale as chords - ex 6

When you start working on this it can be good to just try each of the sounds out over the root, so for example the Am pentatonic voicings over an A pedal or the F minor voicings over a D pedal and just get a bit of a feel for how each of those harmonized scales sound over that root.

I hope you can use this idea and the examples I went over here to create some new comping lines and sounds for your own playing.

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Using the pentatonic scale as chords

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better then please feel free to leave on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you want to hear.

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Do you really know the pentatonic scale?

Most guitarists learn the Pentatonic Scale as one of the first things they ever learn on the guitar, and most of the time it is not a scale that we think too much about when we use it. It’s just the pentatonic scale and it’s something that is in our ears and fingers for years. And that is even if we are already for the rest playing music with extended chords, altered dominants etc.

In this lesson I am going to take apart the pentatonic scale and look at some of the things that you can find in there since that might yield some new ways of using it by combining what you know of the pentatonic scale and what you know about improvising with chords and arpeggios.

The Pentatonic Scale

The pentatonic scale that I will spend time on in this lesson is this D minor pentatonic scale:

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 1

If you try to remember all the exercises you have done in a pentatonic scale you will probably find that they are all sequences and groups of notes (3 and 4 are very common) more than they are praciticing specific structures that could be seen as a chord.

Diatonic chords in the Pentatonic scale

In a major scale we create chords by stacking diatonic 3rds. A diatonic third is basically a just a note followed by the note 2 steps higher in the scale. If we build chords in the scale like this we get this scale exercise:

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 2

To get a better overview of what these arpeggios are you can play them as chords (the pentatonic scale is very forgiving with it’s 2 note per string fingerings) and that will give us the following set of chords that are “diatonic triads” in the pentatonic scale.

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 3

As you can see the “triads” that we build are almost never consisiting of actuall 3rd intervals and especially the 4th is much more present in the chords which is why we get stacks of 4ths (the sus chord inversions).

The chords we have are then Dm, F, Gsus4, Csus4, Dsus4 which you could consider the diatonic triads in the scale.

Even if it is possible to play this in a position like I did in example 3 it is very useful both for comping and for using them as arpeggios to practice these on a string set like shown in example 4:

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 4

It is worth while to keep in mind that if you can use the pentatonic scale to play a solo over a chord then probably the chords in example 4 are good for comping over that chord. Maybe try out example 4 over a Bb bass note to get a Bbmaj7 sound.

Open voiced diatonic chords

Now that we have 3 different types of chords: major, minor and sus4. We can start getting more out of the chords by playing them as open voiced triads. The easiest place to start with making open voiced triads is to take example 4 and then lower the 2nd note an octave. If you do that you will get the following chords:

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 5

With open voiced triads you get a lot out of inverting them, because they contain a lot of quite large intervals. To just cover that I’ve written out a set of inversions for each type of the open voiced triads:

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 6

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 7

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 8

Practicing these open voiced triad inversions is a great thing to put to use with pentatonic scales and they are also great for right hand accuracy and technique since they contian a lot of irregular string skips.

If you want to check out open voiced triads in more detail you can also have a look at this lesson: Open Triads in Solos

Shell voicings in the pentatonic scale

One way to think of the D minor pentatonic scale is to think of it as a Dm7 arpeggio with an added G. Since the Dm7 chord is to be found in the scale we can of course also use a Dm7 shell voicing and try to play that through the scale.

I have written this out in example 9. The most logical starting point seemed to be the standard Dm7 shell voicing in the 5th fret. From There I take it through all 5 degrees of the scale to get some other voicings. Some of the voicings have nice seconds in them and can be put to good use in any situation where Dm pentatonic is an option.

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 9

If you want to know more about using shell voicings as arpeggios you can also check out my lesson on this subject: Shell Voicings as Arpeggios

A few examples

All three examples are basic II V I progressions in the key of C, so Dm7, G7alt and Cmaj7. They should illustrate how you can use some of the arpeggios and structures cover in the first part of this article.

The first example is using the open voiced triads, and more or less just playing the first two arpeggios from example 5, which are a Dm and then an inversion of a Csus4 (or an open voiced Fsus2 if you will). From there the line descends down the scale and continues to a G7 alt line that is based around an AbmMaj7(9) arpeggio that then is resolved via the Ab to the 5th(G) of C.

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 10

Using the “diatonic triads” from example 2 in a similar basic way is also a very useful. In the 2nd line I start of with an A and then go into the F major 2nd inversion and G sus 4 triads from example 2. On the G7alt the line is using the Bb min pentatonic scale. First a stack of 4ths from Bb, which would be the same as the Dsus4 triad in example 2.  Fromt here it descends down the scale and resolves to the 7th of Cmaj7

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 11

The third example is mixing up the open voiced  triads and stacks of 4ths. First an open voiced Csus4 triad followed by a Gsus4 triad. From there it continues with a basic line on G7alt that is build around an AbmMaj7 arpeggio that via an chromatic approach resolves to the 5th(G) of Cmaj7

Do you really know the pentatonic scale ex 12

Some of the chord names that I end up using in this lesson like the Gsus4 and the Dsus4 are maybe not the best names to describe the sound that you have at your disposal with these arpeggios, but it is still very worth while to use this approach to get some new arpeggios and melodic structures out of the pentatonic scale. By looking at it in the same way we would the major or melodic minor scale.

I hope that you can use the material that I went over here to get some new ideas and make some good surprising lines using pentatonic scales.

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Do you really know the pentatonic scale

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Pentatonics part 3 – Arpeggios and Melodic ideas

 

In this lesson I am going to take another approach to using pentatonic scales so that we can get some other sounds than what you might already use from it. I am going to do that by analyzing some of the different structures that are contained in it and later demonstrating how that can be used in a solo.

The Scale and some arpeggios

For the theory part of this lesson I’ll use the C minor pentatonic scale as shown here:

Pentatonics part 3 - Arpeggios and Melodic ideas - ex 1

I assume that you are familiar with the notes in the scale : C Eb F G Bb

Let’s have a look at what triads we can pull out of the scale, if you try to build a major or minor triad from each of the notes in the scale you find that these 2 triads are the only possibilities:

Pentatonics part 3 - Arpeggios and Melodic ideas - ex 2

Finding them is quite simple, For each note in the scale you look whether they have f.ex a minor 3rd, so that is only possible for C and G, and for G we can’t make a triad because we don’t have a fifth(D) in the scale.

In last weeks lesson I was talking about: Sus4 Triads as Upper Structures and you can in the same way as I described above find three of those in the scale: Csus4, Fsus4 and Bbsus4.

As I talked about in the lesson on the Sus4 triads they are connected to quartal harmony, and this lesson: Diatonic chords of the Pentatonic Scale Will show you how pentatonic chords and quartal harmony are very closely related.

Pentatonics part 3 - Arpeggios and Melodic ideas - ex 3

So now we have 5 different triads that we can use to make lines with, and don’t remember that you can also use their inversions and use them as Open Triads in your lines so that is in fact a vast amount of structures to play with.

The lines

Our goal is of course to make pentatonic lines that sound less “standard pentatonic” so that we can combine the fact that we are using a scale we know very well with some structures in the scale that we might not very often use.

Pentatonics part 3 - Arpeggios and Melodic ideas - ex 4

The first example is the 1st 4 bars of the song Night and Day. On the Abmaj7 I am using C minor pentatonic and playing a Csus4 triad followed by an Eb major triad. The scale choice for the G7al is Db maor or Bb minor pentatonic. On that I am first playing a Db major triad in a sequence followed by a Bb minor triad before it resolves to the fifth(G) of Cmaj7.

The second example is a II V I in G major. Here I am using Am pentatonic over the Am7 and Fm (or Ab major) pentatonic over the D7alt.

The first part of the line is just an Am triad melody until the 3 of the bar. It is followed by a Dsus4 root position triad. On the D7 it descends down an Ab major triad followed by an ascending Bbsus4 triad that resolves to the fifth(D) of Gmaj7

Pentatonics part 3 - Arpeggios and Melodic ideas - ex 5

The last example is a II V I in D major. On the E minor I am (again) using the pentatonic scale of the root of the chord, and the A7alt is using a C minor (or Eb major)  pentatonic scale. The Em line is the combination of first a G major triad in a pattern and then a descending Asus4 triad. On the A7alt the line is constructed by first an Fsus4 arpeggio followed by a Csus4 arpeggio before it resolves to the 9(E) of Dmaj.

Pentatonics part 3 - Arpeggios and Melodic ideas - ex 6

I hope you can use some of the ideas I covered in this lesson to make up new lines with pentatonic scales. This approach can also serve as a bridge towards using different arpeggios over chords in major or melodic minor situations, so in that way it might be a gateway to more jazz approaches when soloing.

As always you can download a PDF of the examples here for later study:

Pentatonics part 3 – Arpeggios and Melodic ideas

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