The Return of The Pent
I was very intrigued by Chris J's article and some of the posts he has made previously suggesting how the old fav minor pent shapes can be used in new ways over different types of chords.
I asked him if I could do a "strictly" so we can have a go at putting this into practice and he was happy for me to see what I could come up with.
I really wanted to see if we could come up with something very simple in terms of a chord progression and yet create some nice effects and different melodies by employing the minor pent shapes as Chris suggests.
What I discovered was that by utilising the minor pent shapes and fourth or fifth interval jumps Chris gives as examples, we can create something different very easily. So much so that I was surprised and pleased with the results.
I kind of gave his examples a bit of a tweak here an there to avoid the "computerised" sound problem of using sequences that Chris warns us of.
Chris' article will provide the backing notation for this although I'm happy as usual to tab out anything you find useful in my example.
www.ibreathemusic.com/article/175
Have a look at his introduction and the next page on how minor pents might work over major chords.
The minor pents based on the 3rd 6th and 7th of the major chord are the ones we're interested in here.
My backing track is an acoustic finger picked backing track in G major.
I start off by staying in G Ionian and then using the B minor pentatonic and the E minor pentatonic. I think you'll hear clearly when I go into them as the sequences are pretty obvious, but later on I found nice ways of connecting the two by sliding up and down and creating some nice yet very basic effects.
The lead is also done on my acoustic, mainly because I was to lazy to go and get another guitar but actually I like the overall acoustic vibe
Lets have a quick look at the theory applied to the scales I'm using.
G major - G B D
B minor pent - B D E F# A
This provides the 3 5 6 7 2 tones of the scale of G major. No root but as Chris points out the major 7th is present and frankly, it sounds pretty good!
E minor pent - E G A B D
This gives the 6 1 2 3 5 scales tones of G major. Root present too. I think this one is a little more obvious considering the relationship between G Major and E minor but nevertheless the point here is to employ the minor pent shapes, which we all know like the back of our hands and use them in new ways.
Chris suggests one more available based on the 7th of the scale which would be F# and I didnt use it, this is probably because I am using a basic chord and this scales seem to fit better with some nicely extended chords. Chris gives some examples of how that might operate but for the purposes of my demonstration I omitted it, but can you find a way to superimpose it? Maybe...
OK, the task then if you choose to accept will be to use the available appropriate minor pentatonics to superimpose over the given chord progression in G Major. Have fun and many thanks Chris for the new way of looking at our old friend!
As always...Enjoy!
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Must say you have a good grip on these pentatonics.
Originally Posted by Mateo150
). One of these pitches I start on id the F# to try to incoparate the concepts Russ was talking about. I pretty much stick to the Em pentonic with a few diatonic notes in there...