Hexatonic scales are any scales that have six notes; the blues scale was actually your first hexatonic scale. But now we’ll try a different note: the 6th of the major scale.

This pitch is located one fret below the b7, or two frets above the 5. The hexatonic scale has been widely used in rock, in solos ranging from Jimmy Page’s “Stairway to Heaven” solo to Carlos Santana’s work on “Black Magic Woman”. Many guitarists incorrectly identify this particular hexatonic scale as the Dorian scale – we’ll look at the differences soon.

Going back to our first minor pentatonic fingering, here’s the hexatonic scale with the addition of 6 – we have two possibilities:

 | R  |  |   | b3 |
 | 5  |  | 6 | b7 |
 | b3 |  | 4 |
 | b7 |  | R |
 | 4  |  | 5 |    | 6 |
 | R  |  |   | b3 |

 |   | R  |  |   | b3 |
 |   | 5  |  | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |  | 4 |
 | 6 | b7 |  | R |
 |   | 4  |  | 5 |
 |   | R  |  |   | b3 |

The second fingering only has one practical fingering:

 |   | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |
 | 4 |    | 5 |    |
 | R |    |   | b3 |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |

And that’s also the case with the third fingering:

 |   | 4  |   | 5  |    | 6 |
 |   | R  |   |    | b3 |   |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |    |   |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |    |   |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |    |   |
 |   | 4  |   | 5  |    |   |

In theory, the fourth fingering could have a couple, but in practice only one is easy:

 |   | 5  |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   |    | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |    | R |    |
 |   | 4  |    | 5 |    |
 |   | R  |    |   | b3 |
 |   | 5  |    | 6 | b7 |

And it’s the same with the fifth fingering:

 |   | b7 |   | R  |
 |   | 4  |   | 5  |
 | R |    |   | b3 |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 16 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Almost all of the other scales we use can be seen as the pentatonic scale with the addition of one or more notes. This has led to teaching methods based on five scale positions (like the CAGED system that you might have heard of), but I think that’s limiting. As we add notes to the scale, we’ll end up with MORE than two notes on some strings, which opens up a lot more fingering possibilities. But for the next couple of scales we’ll keep things simple, and look at only five fingerings.

Blues is a traditional music that uses the pentatonic scale with additions. Many blues tunes use a number of additions to the pentatonic scale, but a lot of blues tunes add just one note – the b5 of the major scale, often called the “blue note”. That gives us a scale formula of 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7.

Looking at our first pentatonic fingering, here’s the scale you’ve learned:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

Here’s the same scale with the addition of the “blue note”:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  | 9  | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

When we take this scale into the next fingering, we have a problem: not all of the note fit under your fingers. This is a lot like the situation we encountered in the minor pentatonic scale’s 3rd fingering, where we have to shift on one string. But now, because of the layout of the guitar’s tuning, we have a couple of different options…

We can add the ‘blue note’ by reaching back:

      |    | 11 |    | 13 |
      |    | 11 |    | 13 |
      | 10 | 11 | 12 |    |
      | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 9 || 10 |    |    | 13 |
      |    | 11 |    | 13 |

Or we can add the blue note by stretching forward:

 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 | 10 | 11 | 12 |    |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 | 14 |

Because we’ve got a couple of options, we now have more than five scale fingerings. The trick to unlocking the possibilities lies in learning which note is which in the scale fingerings.

Our first minor pentatonic scale fingering looks like this, in terms of the notes we’re playing compared to the major scale:

 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 | b3 |    | 4  |
 | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  |    | 5  |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |

“R” designates the root note (the tonic) of the scale; each additional pitch is now designated by its position in the major scale. The ‘blue note’ is the b5 of the major scale, which is one half step (one fret) below the 5… or one half step above the 4. Applying this to minor pentatonic fingering 1, we get this:

 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |

Now let’s look at minor pentatonic fingering 2:

 |    | b3 |    | 4  |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  |    | 5  |    |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  |

We can add the blue note by going one half step below the 5:

   |    | b3 |   | 4  |
   |    | b7 |   | R  |
   | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
   | R  |    |   | b3 |
 b5| 5  |    |   | b7 |
   |    | b3 |   | 4  |

or by going one half step above the 4:

 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  | b5 | 5  |    |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |

Changing the third minor pentatonic fingering is easy:

 |    | 4  | b5 |  5 |    |
 |    | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |    |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |    |
 |    | 4  | b5 |  5 |    |

The fourth leads to two fingerings, one moving back:

 | b5 | 5  |    |   | b7 |
 |    |    | b3 |   | 4  |
 |    | b7 |    | R |    |
 |    | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
 |    | R  |    |   | b3 |
 | b5 | 5  |    |   | b7 |

And one moving forward:

 | 5  |    |   | b7 |
 |    | b3 |   | 4  | b5 |
 | b7 |    | R |    |
 | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
 | R  |    |   | b3 |
 | 5  |    |   | b7 |

The fifth position also leads to two different fingerings:

 |   | b7 |    | R  |
 |   | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 | R |    |    | b3 |    |
 | 5 |    |    | b7 |    |
 |   | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |   | b7 |    | R  |    |

 |    |   | b7 |    | R  |
 |    |   | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 |    | R |    |    | b3 |
 | b5 | 5 |    |    | b7 |
 |    |   | b3 |    | 4  |
 |    |   | b7 |    | R  |

As you work with incorporating the b5 into your fingerings, you’ll see how being able to view it as the b5 (one fret below the 5) or as the #4 (one fret above the 4) will help your mastery of the fretboard.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 15 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The Minor Pentatonic Scale

The most commonly used scale for guitarists is the minor pentatonic scale. A few definitions before we start playing it, because these terms will come up again: “scale” comes from the Latin word for “ladder”, and it’s used to describe any sequence of tones that rise or fall through one octave. (An “octave” is the distance from any pitch and the next pitch with the same name – like the distance from fifth string, third fret C to second string, first fret C.). “Pentatonic” comes from the Greek words “pente”, which means five, and “tonikos”, or tone; pentatonic scales are any scales with five different notes in the octave. And “minor” is a term applied to any scale or chord that contains the major scale’s third note lowered by a half step – a C major scale is the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C; any C based chord or scale that has Eb in can be considered minor.

What makes scales sound different from each other isn’t just the notes in the scale – it’s also the relationship of the sounds to each other. In most melodies, scales, and chord progressions, there’s going to be one pitch that sounds final… like you’ve arrived at the end of the musical journey. That pitch is called the “tonic”, and it’s the note that names the scale: A C minor pentatonic has C as it’s home base, while an Eb major pentatonic (which contains exactly the same pitches, as we’ll see later on) has Eb the tonic.

When we analyze the makeup of a scale to see what makes it different from other scales, music theorists compare them to the major scale – the building block of almost all music theory. Later on in this series we’ll look at what makes up a major scale; for right now, we’ll just say that the minor pentatonic scale has the formula 1-b3-4-5-b7, which means a C minor pentatonic scale has the notes C, Eb, F, G, and Bb.

If we start from the C note on the eighth fret of the sixth string, we’ll find the easiest way to finger this scale is C, then Eb on the 11th fret of the 6th string, F on the 8th fret of the 5th string, G on the 10th fret of the 5th string, Bb on the 8th fret of the 4th string, and C again at the 10th fret of the 4th string. Those notes make up the entire scale, but we can keep going through the next octave and get this fingering:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

A brief note about fingering: although there are some guitarists, even a few famous ones, who use just two fingers for these scales, I’d advise you to learn them in strict position (fingering 1-4, 1-3, 1-3, 1-3, 1-4, 1-4 for the one just shown. Avoiding unnecessary shifts of position will help you visualize the fretboard; once you can “see” the notes that belong to this scale, feel free to use whatever shifts and stretches you’d like.

Notice there are just two notes on each string. That’s because of the scale structure, and the way the guitar is tuned… and it gives us a huge advantage over other instruments in using this scale. Since each string will have only two notes, one of them must be the lowest note on the sixth string – and as a result, there will be only five possible fingerings, one beginning with each scale note.

To put it another way, if you’re playing the C pentatonic scale in 8th position, you’re playing 10th fret notes on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th strings, and 11th fret notes on the other three strings. If you want to move your hand up to the 10th position, you can play those same notes using the first and second fingers; we can complete the next scale fingering by filling in the pitches C, Eb, F, G, and Bb that we can reach from the 10th position:

 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    | 12 |    |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |

We can continue moving up the fretboard to the 11th position and get this fingering… which is actually the one I teach last in lessons, because it’s the only one that involves a shift of position:

 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    |    | 16 |
 | 12 |    |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |
 |    | 13 |    | 15 |    |

You can also play that fingering one octave lower, in open position. But when learning scales, I find it best to stick to “closed” fingerings (no open strings) until you’ve mastered the positions. If you can’t reach the 16th fret on your guitar, no problem – just practice these fingerings in a different key. In the key of F, the first fingering will be at the first position, the second fingering in third position, and this fingering will be in 5th position.

Now I’m going to drop an octave – notes on the 15th fret are an octave higher than the notes on the 3rd fret, so this fourth fingering pattern will begin with the G (the fourth note of the C minor pentatonic scale) at the third fret:

 | 3 |   |   | 6 |
 |   | 4 |   | 6 |
 | 3 |   | 5 |   |
 | 3 |   | 5 |   |
 | 3 |   |   | 6 |
 | 3 |   |   | 6 |

There’s one thing I want you to notice about this fingering: it’s the same as fingering 1, but with two notes moved up a fret – the higher note on the 5th string, and the lower note on the 2nd string. The reason why that happens is important in music theory, but it’s beyond the score of this lesson – I’ll talk about it at some point in the future.

Finally, our last fingering begins with the fifth note of the scale – Bb if you’re in the key of C. We end up with this:

 |   | 6 |   | 8 |
 |   | 6 |   | 8 |
 | 5 |   |   | 8 |
 | 5 |   |   | 8 |
 |   | 6 |   | 8 |
 |   | 6 |   | 8 |

Notice two things about this fingering: first, it’s the only fingering that’s perfectly symmetrical, with the two ‘outside’ strings fingered 2-4, and the two central ‘inside’ strings fingered 1-4. Second, I want you to notice that there is a note on the 8th fret of every string… just as there was in our first position.

This means we’ve come full circle, and have now identified every possible fretboard position of the notes in this scale. A complete view of the C minor pentatonic will look like this:

( fingering 3)      (fingering 5)      (fingering 2)           (fingering 4)
   | 1 |   | 3 |   |   | 6 |   | 8 |   |    | 11 |    | 13 |   | 15 |    |    | 18 |   |
   | 1 |   |   | 4 |   | 6 |   | 8 |   |    | 11 |    | 13 |   |    | 16 |    | 18 |   |
 0 |   |   | 3 |   | 5 |   |   | 8 |   | 10 |    | 12 |    |   | 15 |    | 17 |    |   |
   | 1 |   | 3 |   | 5 |   |   | 8 |   | 10 |    |    | 13 |   | 15 |    | 17 |    |   |
   | 1 |   | 3 |   |   | 6 |   | 8 |   | 10 |    |    | 13 |   | 15 |    |    | 18 |   |
   | 1 |   | 3 |   |   | 6 |   | 8 |   |    | 11 |    | 13 |   | 15 |    |    | 18 |   |
           (fingering 4)       (fingering 1)      (fingering 3)

Depending on your guitar, you might be able to keep going for another position, or even two.

Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb is a longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academyin Plainfield, Illinois. This advice first appeared in Volume 4 # 14 of Guitar Noise News. Sign-up for our newsletter to receive more free tips like this by email.

More from Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4
• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1 was written by Tom Serb for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

There’s an element of salesmanship, in the way I use this description, when I’m introducing the CAGED system to a student for the first time. I see this as necessary because I appreciate that it is not immediately obvious exactly what the CAGED system is, nor what it is good for. 

Let’s attempt to address the second issue first. If you ask me ‘What’s it good for?’ I think the best answer I can give is: ‘It’s good for finding things on the guitar fretboard. 
Think of a five-drawer filing cabinet, but instead of the drawers being full of old correspondence and copies of long-expired legal contracts and things, it has folders with much more interesting (to the guitarist) labels, such as: ‘Chords’, ‘Scales’, ‘Licks’, ‘Riffs’, ‘Arpeggios’ and  ‘Modes’. Also; quite unlike any filing cabinet I have ever actually been personally in charge of; everything in the ‘CAGED’ filing cabinet is beautifully and elegantly organised and always found in exactly the place it should be!

The CAGED system is taught in a wide variety of ways simply because it has a wide variety of applications. It is a system that is both very powerful and very adaptable. 

However, because it is powerful and adaptable it can easily be presented to the student of guitar as being more complicated than it really is. This is a little ironic, as the CAGED system is really a system for simplifying learning the guitar!’ 

I think the problem arises because the use you are able to make of the CAGED system is dependent upon other areas of knowledge – especially guitar music theory knowledge. 

So, how you use the CAGED system may ultimately be unlimited, but initially it will mostly depend upon what level of understanding you have of guitar music theory.  

With this in mind, I set out to record a video lesson that enabled guitar students to make good use of the CAGED system at the lowest possible point of entry – i.e. at a level where little, if anything needs to be known about guitar music theory.  Here’s “Part 1:”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8a5SsbG-1Y

In this video, as well as in the following ”CAGED system Parts 2,” I’ll show you how to use the CAGED system simply to find notes on the fretboard. For example: to find all the ‘C’ notes on the fretboard – how long would that take you do you think? If the answer is greater than about five seconds then you will find this video lesson useful, interesting and immediately applicable. 

And here’s the second video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7MoHfh0ZvM

But, more importantly, both these videos will hopefully help you gain a very good understanding of the CAGED system and what it actually is! You will, metaphorically speaking, take delivery of a shiny, brand new five-drawer filing cabinet that magically organises itself!  

It’ll then be up to you, over time, to fill it up with other musically useful things.  

Hope that has whetted your appetite for the videos…because, did I already mention that the CAGED system is probably the single most important thing I ever learnt about playing the guitar…?

Nick Minnion has recorded Over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site: SecretGuitarTeacher.com. Nick also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Cracking the CAGED System was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Ionian

Ionian mode is the same as the Major scale, which we covered at the outset of this article.  In the key of F Major, the “tonal center” or the bass note that would seem to fit against our entire progression would be F.  When this happens, we get Ionian mode.

Here are some examples of songs which sound in Ionian mode for either the entire song or significant sections of the song:  “American Pie” by Don McClean, “Angel Eyes” by Jeff Healy, “Authority Song” by John Mellencamp, “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones, “Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, “Bubble Toes” by Jack Johnson, “Call Me Al” by Paul Simon, “Cliffs of Dover” by Eric Johnson, “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls, “Down on the Corner” by CCR, “Drift Away” by Dobie Gray or Uncle Kracker, “Every Breath You Take” by the Police, “Family Tradition” by Hank Williams Jr., “Fool in the Rain” by Led Zeppelin, “Free Falling” by Tom Petty, “Friend of the Devil” by The Grateful Dead, “Glycerine” by Bush, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day, “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys, “Hey Good Lookin” by Hank Williams, “Hey Jude” by the Beatles, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar, “Island in the Sun” by Weezer, “Jack and Diane” by John Mellencamp, “La Bamba” by Richie Valens or Los Lobos, “Last Kiss” by Pearl Jam, “Let It Be” by the Beatles, “Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan, “Mama I’m Coming Home” by Ozzy Osbourne, “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffet, “Never Let You Go” by Third Eye Blind, “Red Red Wine” by UB40, “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash, “Satellite” by Dave Matthews Band, “Sister Golden Hair” by America, “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynard Skynard, “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band, “Under the Boardwalk” by the Drifters, “Under the Bridge” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, “We Just Disagree” by Billy Dean, “Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton, most of “Your Body Is A Wonderland” by John Mayer, … and countless other songs.

Advanced Theory:  In the key of F major starting on the first degree – or F Ionian scale … our chord progression viewing it as relating to F major would be I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, and vii°.  So a F Ionian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords:  F, Gm, Am, Bb, C7 or C, Dm, Edim (or Em), F … So if you’re in a song where F is the I chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: I Major, ii minor, iii minor, IV Major, V7 Dom 7 (or Major), vi minor, vii diminished (or substituted minor) — think F Ionian! … The most reliable indicators of Ionian mode are the Major I, IV & V chords, particularly if the V is a Dominant 7 or V7 chord, and/or ALL, or at least the vast majority of the chords, are diatonic chords built on the major scale of the I chord.

Dorian

By playing against our sample progressions, certain ideas immediately pop out … if you hear a i to IV change, the Dorian mode, or the second mode, fits – you can take a natural minor scale based on the i and simply raise the sixth degree of the scale (i.e., play a major 6th instead of the typical minor 6th or b6 normally found in the natural minor scale). The reason this works is that you’re adjusting the scale to accommodate the major third necessary to create the IV chord.  (You might also think of this movement as a common ii – V progression for the key on which the Dorian mode is constructed, i.e., you’d play the Dorian mode from the root of the ii chord). Dorian mode also works well over songs that have a i to bVII change – because the minor i chord is treated as the ii chord of the modal key and the bVII chord is treated as the I chord of the modal key. The appearance of a minor v chord, particularly against a Major IV chord, can also be characteristic of this mode. And the minor vi half step up to Major bVII distinguishes it from Aeolian. Dorian mode is frequently used in folk, rock, blues & jazz music.

To hear & recognize the sound of the Dorian mode, listen for example to “Oye Como Va” by Santana, “Whipping Post” by the Allman Brothers, “Horse With No Name” by America, the traditional folk classic “Scarborough Fair”, “Another Brick in the Wall – part II” by Pink Floyd, “Badge” by Cream, “Evil Ways” by Santana, “Fly Like An Eagle” by the Steve Miller Band, “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, “Brick House” by the Commodores, “Golgi Apparatus” by Phish, “Le Freak” by Chic, “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors, “Walking on the Sun” by Smash Mouth, “Who Will Save Your Soul” by Jewel, “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles, or even to the verse section in “Moondance” by Van Morrison, or the solo section to “Light My Fire” by the Doors, or the solo section of “Your Body Is A Wonderland” by John Mayer).

Advanced Theory: In the key of F major starting on the second degree – or G Dorian scale … our chord progression viewing it as relating to F major would be ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii°, and I (and in chord progressions and songs constructed in all modes except Ionian or Locrian, the diatonic diminished chord is almost always skipped or another chord is substituted in it’s place in the progression*). So a G Dorian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords: Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm (or D)**, (Em), F … So if you’re in a song where Gm is the i chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: i minor, ii minor, bIII Major, IV Major, v minor (or sometimes V or V7 Major)**, vi minor* (or viDim)*, bVII Major — think G Dorian! … The most reliable indicators of Dorian mode are the Major IV and Major bVII chords in a minor i song or progression.

(*Note – since a diminished chord is built on a minor 3rd (or b3) and a b5, often you will often find a chord substituted at the spot in the diatonic modal progression where the diminished chord would otherwise appear – this could be a minor (since the diminished features a minor 3rd), or sometimes Major, built on the diminished root, or sometimes even a Major built 1/2 step below the diminished root – as frequently occurs where a bVII Major chord is substituted for the vii(Dim) chord in an Ionian Mode progression. **It is common even in songs built on minor keys or modes for a Major V or V7 to be substituted, although a minor v is reliable indicator that the song or progression is in a minor mode. Please also note that the chords that I’ve included in parenthesis simply refer to common substitutions that occur in progressions otherwise written in this mode, but that these substituted chords don’t purely fit the diatonic chords or notes of the major scale on which the mode is constructed. They are included because it’s helpful to recognize these common substitutions and not let their presence fool you into thinking that the song is not otherwise constructed in this mode. … Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that any time a chord is substituted for any one of the pure diatonic chords of the Major key on which the mode being employed is actually constructed, you can and might actually need to adjust your primary chosen modal scale, or even find and use a different modal scale, to pick up and include those chord tones/notes of the substituted chord which are not in the diatonic major scale on which the primary diatonic modal progression is constructed. If you find this idea confusing, there’s a specific example further clarifying this adjustment process & how to apply it at the very end of this article).

Phrygian

The Phrygian Mode, or the third mode, is uniquely characterized by it’s Spanish sound and flavor, and is thus sometimes also called the Spanish Gypsy scale. It is used most often against a half-step chord change from the minor i chord to the bII chord, or a substituted Major I chord to a bII chord. It resides in and exists because of the half-step between the 3rd & 4th degrees of the major scale. An example would be playing an E Phrygian scale constructed starting on the third scale degree of the C Major scale (or, you could also look at it as an A natural minor scale) over an E to F chord change, which is a very familiar use and a sound we’re all very familiar with. (So a shorthand way to find & play Phrygian mode for any note or chord that you’re on is to simply find the 4th of the note or chord you’re on & play a natural minor scale, but emphasize the Phrygian note – for example, for E Phrygian, play A natural minor – but emphasizing the mode root E … for D Phrygian, play G natural minor – but emphasizing the mode root D, and so on.  Just be careful when substituting the 4th’s related natural minor scale in this way to emphasize the proper root note necessary to make the mode Phrygian). … In the key we’re using in this study – F Major, Phrygian mode could be identified and used over an Am to Bb (or A to Bb) chord change, to-wit: an A Phrygian mode scale.

For a good example of the unique sound of the Phrygian mode, listen to any of these jazz tunes: “Ole” by John Coltrane, “Sketches of Spain” by Miles Davis, or “Bemsha Swing,” by Thelonious Monk.

Advanced Theory: In the key of F major starting on the third degree – or A Phrygian scale … our chord progression viewing it as relating to F major would be iii (or sometimes III), IV, V, vi, vii°, I, ii (and in chord progressions and songs constructed in all modes except Ionian or Locrian, the diatonic diminished chord is almost always skipped or another chord is substituted in it’s place in the progression). So an A Phrygian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords: Am (or A), Bb, C, Dm, (Em or E), F, Gm (or G) … So if you’re in a song where Am is the i chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: i minor (or sometimes I Major), 1/2 step up to bII Major, bIII Major, iv minor, v minor (or vDim, or sometimes a V or V7 Major is substituted), bVI Major, bvii minor (or bVII Major, which is a common substitution) — think A Phrygian! … Also, in Phrygian mode, you could even see substitute Major chords for every chord in the progression, even the 4 chord – IV, although even where such Major substitution is done in Phrygian, the iv chord is usually always kept minor. … Remember, the most reliable indicator of the Phrygian mode will be the presence of a 1/2 step move from the i, or I, up to a bII.

Lydian

The Lydian Mode, or fourth mode, is uniquely characterized by it’s #4 (or augmented 4th). The Lydian mode is often used where the I chord moves to II chord – and both are major. Particularly where the progression moves from the I chord to the II chord and repeats or cycles. (In fact, the presence of a II Major chord and/or movement from the I Major to II Major in the progression will often be the most identifying characteristic of the Lydian mode and distinguishes it from the Ionian mode or Major scale). The Lydian mode is also helpful where there is a 1/2 step change from a major I down to a minor vii chord (i.e. minor chord built on 7th degree of the underlying tonal/modal major scale). In this way, since we are talking about a half-step (one fret) chord change, it is similar to the Phrygian mode and other than the root being a half-step different, the fingerings are fairly identical. If we are in Bb Lydian, these chords would be Bb (I), C (II) and Am (vii). Additionally, a I – II – V (in Bb Lydian, that would be Bb, C, F) progression might also nicely support use of the Lydian mode well. Lydian mode progressions will tend to sound unresolved because of the #4 in the scale, and thus it is helpful to anchor the sound of the mode by using the root note of the mode as a drone/pedal tone or bass note for the other chords in your progression.  For example, if we’re in Bb Lydian (constructed from F major) and the progression is moving from Bb to C and repeating or “cycling,” play the C chord as a ^Bb/C chord by adding a Bb as a bass note to the C chord to help anchor it to the root note of the mode.  Because of the tendency for your ear to want to resolve to another chord when playing in Lydian, it is usually played against a drone/pedal tone and/or only for sections of a song.

For examples of the unique sound of the Lydian mode in the rock context listen to “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, which features a C Major scale against the F to G cycling progression producing F Lydian mode.  Or you can also listen to, “Hey Jealousy” by the Gin Blossoms, “Flying in a Blue Dream” by Joe Satriani, “Hog Heaven” by Frank Zappa, “Jane Says” by Jane’s Addiction, “Just Remember I Love You” by Firefall, the intro & verses of “Here Comes My Girl” by Tom Petty, or the intro & verses of “Freewill” by Rush.  Some very recognizable Lydian melodies are the very first few notes of the theme songs from The Simpson’s or The Jetsons cartoon shows, or the song “Maria” from West Side Story.  Even “Oceans” by Pearl Jam may be yet another cool example featuring Lydian mode.

Advanced Theory: In the key of F major starting on the fourth degree – or Bb Lydian scale … our chord progression viewing it as relating to F major would be IV, V, vi, vii°, I, ii, iii (and in chord progressions and songs constructed in all modes except Ionian or Locrian, the diatonic diminished chord is almost always skipped or another chord is substituted in it’s place in the progression). So a Bb Lydian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords: Bb, C, Dm, (Eb or Em), F, Gm, Am … So if you’re in a song where Bb is the I chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: I Major (or Augmented), II Major, iii minor, minor #iv (or #ivDim, both built on the root 1/2 step below the root of the V chord, or a substituted Major IV 1/2 step above the iii – which is more commonly used in this mode), V Major, vi minor, vii minor — think Bb Lydian! … The most reliable indicators of Lydian mode will be Major I and a Major II chord, and almost always, the presence of a minor vii chord 1/2 step below the Major I chord.

(Note – there is also a fairly common & oft-used variation of the Lydian mode which involves not only #4 but also substituting a b7 for the 7 of the scale. Which is used as necessary to accommodate chords requiring this b7 note change, like, for example, where a Major bVII chord is substituted for the minor vii chord.. This common variation is called the Lydian b7 scale: http://gosk.com/scales/lydianb7-scale-for-guitar.php )

Mixolydian

The Mixolydian Mode, or the fifth mode, will work over any Dominant 7th chord, since you’re merely flattening the 7th degree of the major scale associated with that chord to accommodate the b7 necessary to the Dom7 chord. Further, mixolydian is often used where the progression moves from a major chord to the major chord a whole step (two frets below it) … for example, where the progression moves from I to bVII to I to bVII and cycles back & forth – you get the idea. It’s also used in folk or country progressions (or rock or blues) where the progression immediately moves from the I chord to the V chord particularly where there is also a IV chord in the progression – this is due to the mode being built on the major key of the V chord and there being a whole-step move down to the IV chord, characteristic of the I to bVII movement of this mode.

For a good example of the unique sound of the mixolydian mode, listen to The Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain” which moves from B to A to B to A -or- I bVII I bVII and is played in E Mixolydian – which you might also view as a V to IV progression in E Major.  Other Mixolydian examples include a traditional folk tune “Old Joe Clark,” “No Rain” by Blind Melon, “I’m So Glad” by Cream, the jazz standard “On Broadway” by George Benson, the main riff from “Third Stone From The Sun” by Jimi Hendrix, “1999” by Prince, “Cinnamon Girl” by Neil Young, “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour, “Franklin’s Tower” by the Grateful Dead, “Jessica” by the Allman Brothers Band, “Lowrider” by War, “Free” by Phish, “Get Down Tonight” by KC & the Sunshine Band, “Louie, Louie” by the Kingsman, “Possum Kingdom” by the Toadies, “What I Got” and “Wrong Way” by Sublime, “What I Like About You” by the Romantics, “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles, the intro & verse sections of “Norwegian Wood” by the Beatles, or even the verse section of “Tequila” by The Champs.

Advanced Theory: In the key of F major starting on the fifth degree – or C Mixolydian scale … our chord progression viewing it as relating to F major would be V, vi, vii°, I, ii, iii, IV (and in chord progressions and songs constructed in all modes except Ionian or Locrian, the diatonic diminished chord is almost always skipped or another chord is substituted in it’s place in the progression). So a C Mixolydian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords: C, Dm, (Em or E), F, Gm (or G substitution – more likely), Am,Bb, … So if you’re in a song where C is the I chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: I Major, ii minor, iii minor (or iiiDim, or even a III Major), IV Major, v minor or V Major (a Major V is almost always substituted in Mixolydian mode!), vi minor, bVII Major — think C Mixolydian! … The most reliable indicator of Mixolydian mode will be the presence of the Major bVII chord a whole-step below the Major I chord, coupled with the presence of a Major IV chord.

Aeolian

The Aeolian Mode, or sixth mode, is the exact same thing as the natural minor scale! For any major scale, find it’s sixth degree, and build a natural minor scale over it (1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7) & you get the Aeolian mode. Any song which features a i iv v, like a minor blues or rock progression using the i iv v, can be played in the Aeolian mode. You might also see a V7, or a bIII, bVI, or bVII chord in songs in this mode. Certainly, any song which moves from the minor i to minor iv is most likely in Aeolian mode & will sound good against the natural minor scale.

For a good example of songs featuring the Aeolian Mode, listen to the guitar solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” or “Achilles Last Stand,” or any variety of minor blues or rock songs using all minor chords for the i iv & v – note sometimes a Major V or V7 is substituted for songs in this mode, but the minor i to minor iv change will give it away.  You can also listen to these classic songs: “All Along the Watchtower” by Bob Dylan or Jimi Hendrix, “Black Magic Woman” by Fleetwood Mac or Santana, “Maria, Maria” by Santana, “Building A Mystery” by Sara McLachlan, “Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac, “You Give Love a Bad Name” by Bon Jovi, “Mr. Jones” by the Counting Crows, “Two Step” by the Dave Matthews Band, “Thank You” by Dido, the main riff to “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica, “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne, “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath, “Buddy Holly” and “Hash Pipe” by Weezer, “Last Resort” by Papa Roach, “First Tube” by Phish, “ATWA” by System of a Down, “Schism” by Tool, “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits, “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics or Marilyn Manson, and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit, which uses power chords derived from the Aeolian mode.

Advanced Theory: In the key of F major starting on the sixth degree – or D Aeolian scale … our chord progression would be vi, vii°, I, ii, iii, IV, V (and in chord progressions and songs constructed in all modes except Ionian or Locrian, the diatonic diminished chord is almost always skipped or another chord is substituted in it’s place in the progression, although in blues songs in this mode you will sometimes see a ii° chord). So D Aeolian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords: Dm, (Em or E), F, Gm, Am (or A), Bb, C, … So if you’re in a song where Dm is the i chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: i minor, ii minor (or iiDim, or even a II Major), bIII Major, iv minor, v minor (sometimes the V Major or V7 Dominant is substituted), bVI Major, bVII Major — think D Aeolian! …The most reliable indicators of Aeolian mode will be the presence of both a Major bVI and Major bVII below the minor i chord, & a particularly tell-tale identifying giveaway will be the presence of a minor iv chord.

Locrian

Finally, the Locrian Mode, or seventh mode, will be immediately identified by the presence of a diminished chord at the root or heart of the progression. This mode is based on the root of the diminished chord. Consequently, it has a very exotic sound. Some might describe it as a Japanese or even Hindu type flavor. This mode is not generally used for song construction, but there are rare examples. You will most likely encounter it for a short passage or progression, or more often when it is used to emphasize a diminished chord.

Frankly, there just aren’t many songs in Western music written entirely in the Locrian mode, but if you’re a masochist, you could listen to the march from Three Fantastic Dances by Dmitri Shostakovich, which is one of the rare examples of a whole piece written in mainly Locrian mode.  You will hear this mode used over diminished chords & diminished jazz progressions.

Advanced Theory: In the key of F major starting on the seventh degree – or E Locrian scale … our chord progression would be vii°, I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi. So E Locrian chordal progression (remember we’re in the key of F) would feature the following chords: E(dim), F, Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm, … So if you’re in a song where E(dim) is the i° chord, and you see/hear these other chords in this relationship to each other: i(dim), 1/2 step up to bII Major, biii minor, iv minor, bV Major, bVI Major, bvii minor — think E Locrian! … The most reliable indicator of Locrian mode will be a diminished i chord and/or the very noticeable diminished sound of the song or progression.

(Advanced Diminished Theory Note — there is one more 7th degree root mode mode which is commonly used in jazz – the “Super-Locrian Mode.” A Locrian scale has everything flattened but the root 1 & the 4th. The formula is 1 b2 b3 4 b5 b6 b7. However, the Super Locrian mode scale, goes one more, and also flattens the 4th: 1 b2 b3 b4 b5 b6 b7. The Super Locrian is also called the jazz scale, or altered scale, or diminished whole tone scale. Super Locrian is the “offical” name of the 7th mode of the melodic minor scale. It is called the altered scale because it contains the most important jazz alterations (b5, #5, b9, #9) used with altered dominant chords. Since it has all those alterations, it is frequently used over altered dominants, hence it’s shortened name – the Altered scale. A quick look at the way it lines up will give you an idea of why it is also referred to as the diminished whole tone scale.

As my friend bassist Kelly Tomlinson, who majored in music theory, describes: In standard four-part harmony, the vii7 chord is half diminished if it stays in the key, and it usually does, unless it’s being used as a pivot chord to change keys. Then it’s a fully diminished chord that utilizes the flat submediant (i.e. a b4). That diminished chord utilizing a flat submediant (b4) built on the major 7th degree of the original key/scale can then become the leading tone into a substitute V7 of the new key built on the major 2nd degree of the original key/scale – i.e., the 5th degree of the new key/scale – and resolve nicely to change keys in the middle of the song down a minor third, or up a minor third if the process is reversed moving from the V7 chord of the original key/scale to a diminished chord built on the 2nd degree of the original key/scale to the I or i of the new key/scale. This process of using the diminished chord to change keys up or down a minor third works over both Major or minor keys. Consequently, when soloing over diminished chords of all varieties, rather than concentrate on the Locrian modal scale, which has a tritone as its own tonic and dominant rendering it atonal, it’s just best to know where to end up next! All the theory in the world won’t save that trainwreck!)

Final Thought:  Practical Tips on When & How to Combine Modes

In deciding which mode to use, you should always start with the scale or mode which best fits and includes all of, or at least the most, notes from the chords in the song or progression and which best suits the mood of the song or the mood you’re trying to create. You might first start by remembering that one of the three Major modes – Ionian, Lydian & Mixolydian – will likely work better as a choice to play over an entire Major key progression or song, whereas one of the three minor modes – Aeolian, Dorian & Phrygian – will likely work better as a choice to play over an entire minor key progression or song.  The reality, however, is that unless you’re dealing with a fairly simple chord progression or one which exclusively uses diatonic chords all built only from the notes of one underlying key, then you are going to have to make adjustments as necessary to pick up chord tones which are “outside” the notes/tones of the modal scale you initially choose. You might simply adjust your modal scale to pick up any outside notes over the outside chord when it appears in your progression or by choosing to play a different mode, or arpeggio, which better fits the outside chord when it comes up. And remember you can always bend up to chord tones, or use chromatic notes to walk or slide up or down into any chord or scale tones, to make things even more interesting. There are many times, like in using both minor and major pentatonic scales together over a blues progression, where you may want to combine modal scales.* This article is designed merely to give you a good idea how & where to start.

(* Advanced Theory Note on Combining Modes — Let’s take a typical Dorian progression with a minor i chord and a Major IV chord, like Gm to C.  While using a G Dorian modal scale will work over both modes, sometimes it’s even more pleasing to use the G Aeolian mode over the Gm half of the progression emphasizing the b6 of the G natural minor scale, but switching to G Dorian mode (i.e. raising the 6th) over the C (IV) chord to emphasize the Major 3rd of the C chord.  If the progression moves to a Dm for the v chord, G Dorian will continue to work, but so would G Aeolian, since both of those modes also contain all of the notes of Dm (D F A) in their scale.  Another way to look at it is that diatonic chords of G Dorian and G Aeolian modes contain a minor v chord (Dm). … If instead, the V chord is D Major, neither the diatonic G Dorian or G Aeolian modes fit since D contains an F# in it’s construction [D F# A].  Well, we could just use an D Ionian modal scale – D Major scale – over the D chord, but that takes our minor sounding progression and temporarily makes it sound Major and, in this case, not in a good way!  So instead we might try to find a minor sounding mode that also works.  A Aeolian contains an F or b6, not an F# 6, so that won’t work particularly well.  However, an A Dorian scale would raise that 6th from minor b6 to Major 6 and catch the F#, but it also contains a b7 (G), which is the root note of both our G Aeolian and G Dorian modal scales that we have found to be very pleasing and better fit the “mood” of our progression.  [And here's another helpful hint: as in our example, it's actually a very common technique to simply move the very same type same modal scale being used over the 4 chord up a whole-step when playing over the 5 chord - particularly where both chords are Major;  as in our example, moving G Dorian over the IV chord up to play A Dorian over the V chord].

Another example of a very common combination of modes is to mix and match licks from C Mixolydian (built from our F Major scale) with C Dorian (built from a Bb Major scale) over a I  bVII  IV progression in C, i.e., C Bb F.  The reason this works is that both of these modal scales, despite being constructed from different parent Major scales, contain all of the triad notes for all three of those chords.  Combining Mixolydian and Dorian modes constructed from the same root note in this way works well over any I  bVII  IV, or I  IV  bVII, progression.

Finally, since you can use mixolydian mode over any Dom7 chord, it works particularly well to spice up a standard 1 4 5 blues progression which uses all Dom 7 chords – e.g., F7 (I), Bb7 (IV), and C7 (V).  We would play F mixolydian over the F7 chord (the fifth mode constructed in Bb Major), Bb mixolydian over the Bb7 chord (the fifth mode constructed in Eb Major), and C mixolydian over the C7 chord (the fifth mode constructed in F Major).  So we play the mixolydian mode starting on the root note of the chord over each of our Dominant 7 chords to emphasize the b7 note in the chord.  Try it on your blues, you’ll like it!

Remember, the point here is that in choosing which modes to use when combining modes, it’s usually best try to pick ones that either both contain all the notes from all the chords in the progression, or where that’s not possible, and it becomes necessary to choose a different mode to accommodate an “outside” chord tone/note, try to select a mode to play over the “outside” chord which at least creates the same “mood” over the progression being played, e.g., that keeps the same overall all minor, or all Major, modality of the song or progression,… unless you’re purposefully trying to add a tasteful and pleasant sounding touch of Major over an otherwise minor song or progression, or vice-versa, … purposefully incorporating a blues note or an “outside” note to add pleasing color or to create chromatic or other tension to resolve back into a chord tone or to create/follow the unique melody of the song, … or purposefully changing the overall minor v. Major modality entirely to support a new key change or new progression intentionally written to create a completely different mood – as sometimes done in a bridge or chorus, or underneath a solo to make it more interesting.)

I hope this explanation was fairly easy to understand & helpful. Maybe it will inspire you to start spicing up your improvisation and soloing by starting to include modal concepts into your playing or help you more quickly identify which modes might work over the chord progressions being thrown at you on stage. Anyway, have fun, practice hard, & perform like a pro!

©Beth Isbell 2010

A three time finalist in the USA Songwriting Contest & a TAXI Top 10 Pick, Beth Isbell’s guitar playing, vocal delivery & songwriting have been described by national music press as “innovative,” “edgy,” “subversive,” “alternative art at its best!” She’s the frontperson & guitarist of several successful local Texas bands, with a successful solo USA acoustic tour, & highly acclaimed CD releases in multiple genres spanning from psychedelic, indie, blues rock, & blues to Americana, folk & country. You can contact & keep up with her on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/bethisbell

A Simple Way to Understand Modes for Guitar – Part 4 was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

And while the answer is positively mundane, it still might help nudge you in a direction that will help you become a better soloist (and player in general).

Are you ready? Here goes:

A scale is not, usually, a solo.

Take a moment to let that sink in before you gasp at how incredibly underwhelming (not to mention obvious) a statement this is. Take a second moment to get over the sarcastic replies that are filling your head as well.

And then think – how do you go about practicing solos? Many guitarists don’t really practice soloing at all. They practice scales and think that they are practicing solos. They will sit and work on getting their fingers to fly around on the fretboard until they are extremely proficient at it and then think that they are soloing. They aren’t. They’re just playing scales or sequences (or series, if you will – and more on that in a moment). Scales can certainly be used in solos and can be (and usually are) an important tool to create a good solo, but they are just one part of the big picture.

At their heart, the great solos we remember are like miniature songs, songs within songs, if you will. And part of what makes them both great and memorable is that they are sing-able. Or hum-able. They have melodies that stick in your head and you find yourself singing them or whistling them or playing air guitar while they’re running around in your brain. Scales are nice but not very exciting as melodies, unless you’re singing Do, Re, Mi or Joy to the World (the Christmas carol, not the “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” song).

Scales move dutifully from one note to the next and we tend to practice them in steady, even rhythms in order to work on our speed. For instance, if we were to work on the C major scale, we’d probably do something like this:

See? Nice and even eighth notes. Maybe we’ll work on sixteenth notes or even thirty-second notes. After all, speed is what we’re interested in, right?

Melodies are interested in phrases and we’ve discussed the importance of phrasing at many points in this series. Just what do we mean by “phrasing?” Phrasing is how a line of music breathes. Take even a simple descending scale, change up it’s timing a little bit and voila! You’ve the first line of the aforementioned Christmas carol:

Even if you don’t play it or sing it, you can see from the different notes (and I’ve written out the counting for you to help you see it) that this isn’t even. It’s full of long notes and short notes and gives both the player and the listener places to take a breath.

Unless you make a deliberate effort to include phrasing and melodies as part of your practice routine when it comes to soloing, your solos are going to sound like the scales you practice. How can they not, since that’s what you’re practicing?

To be fair, a good number of beginners do get this and so they start to vary their practice routine by playing “series” or “sequences” instead of straight scales. A “series” or “sequence” is a slight variation on a scale. You might play the first four notes in order and then back up two notes, like this:

But if you’re observant (and again, you don’t even need to hear this if you’re paying attention), you can see that these are all eighth notes and therefore are all even. This, then, becomes an exercise about speed and not about phrasing. And there’s the trap. If you’re interested, truly interested in solos as solos, at some point you have to stop thinking about speed enough to become a student of melody and phrasing.

And that’s actually very easy, but not in an “easy to practice with a set format” way. It becomes a matter of putting together little melodic bits either from the scales you already know and practice, or from the melodies you can hear in your head while you’re playing.

For example, here’s the descending Am pentatonic, positioned at the fifth fret:

And here’s a very simple, yet elegant blues-style phrase (in swing eighths, so it’s counted out for you) that is basically a slight, incredibly slight, variation on the last example:

The use of the triplet on the second beat, plus the skipping of a note (or two) of the Am pentatonic scale, plus the occasional reversal of direction makes this sound a lot more like melodic, which makes it sound more like a solo.

Next time out, we’ll use a real life song to explore this idea further, but in the meantime you might find it helpful to go over a couple of old Guitar Columns here at on our site that explore what we’ve been talking about: Leading Questions and Picture in Dorian Gray.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief “sidestep” in our series and I also hope it helps you see that even though we often use scales as a starting point to soloing, they are two different creatures and we’re going to have to spend more time practicing making solos, which will help us make our solos sound less like scales. And we’ll tackle just how to “practice soloing” in Part 10 of this series.

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

Practice With Purpose -Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The first and best clue will be the key of the song.  The key of the song will control the major scale on which the available modes are built.  If the song is in a minor key, then the relative major of that key will control the available modes.  But remember, a chord progression can be in a particular key, but still never go to “1” or “root” chord for that key. For example, we could build a song using diatonic chords from the key of F Major, but not have an F chord in the progression at all.  So in determining which mode to use we listen for the “tonal center” or home base of the progression – what one bass note sounds to your ear like it could fit over every chord in the progression or act as the root for the entire progression even if it’s not the root note for the key?

Here are some chord progressions that fit under each modal scale. Play through each progression and take time to apply each modal scale over the progression while you’re doing so. You may also wish to record each progression or have a friend play the progression, while you focus on applying its related modal scale to it. But I suggest that you also spend time playing the modal scale and progression together, so that you can clearly see how the notes of the modal scale fit into & over the diatonic chords of each progression. (The chords in parenthesis transfer these progressions to our study key of F Major and its resulting modes).

Ionian (normal Major scale – 1 2 3 4 5 6 7)

I – IV – vi – V – I … (F, Bb, Dm, C, F)

I – ii – IV – V – I … (F, Gm, Bb, C, F)

I – V – vi – IV – I … (F, C, Dm, Bb, F)

I – iii – vi – V – I … (F, Am, Dm, C, F)

Dorian (b3 and b7) – 2nd scale degree root (in F Major, that’s G)

i – IV – i – bVII – i … (Gm, C, Gm, F, Gm)

i – bVII – i – bVII – i … (Gm, F, Gm, F, Gm)

i – IV – ii – v – bVII – i … (Gm, C, Am, Dm, F, Gm)

i – bIII – IV – i – bVII – i … (Gm, Bb, C, Gm, F, Gm)

Note that I’m referring to the 1 chord of these Dorian mode sample progressions as Gm (i) , etc., but what is actually happening is that the Gm is the ii chord of F, and so our first Dorian progression could also be written out & understood as:

ii – V – ii – I-  ii (Gm, C, Gm, F, Gm)

Notice that the actual chords of the progression did not change, just the numbering system.  I’ve done this for a reason.  Most of us learn songs based on how the chords relate to the first chord of the progression.  If a songwriter or bandleader hands us a chord chart, they’ll usually just write out something like Gm, C, F with lyrics underneath.  We’ve all seen those charts and any kind of basic chord/lyric tab you find on the internet is probably a form of this kind of simple chart.  Most of us never see the full transcription of the song with key notation, staff lines & notation.  So we may never realize that the progression starting on a particular chord is actually not constructed in the key of that first particular chord, but actually written in another key altogether.  So to properly identify which modal scale to play, it’s also important to be able to recognize the relationships between diatonic chords from the perspective of the root chord of the mode.

(In the advanced theory section of each mode discussion below, I’ve charted out the chords in each mode from the perspective of the key on which the mode is constructed, so I recommend once you’ve read that section, as an exercise come back and adjust the numbering of each progression used in this sample progression section to coincide with the chord numbering for the key on which the mode is actually constructed.  But for now, for purposes of working through and learning sample modal progressions, let’s just number the 1 chord based on the mode’s root).

Phrygian (b2, b3, b6, b7) – 3rd scale degree root (in F Major, that’s A)

i – bII – bIII – i … (Am, Bb, C, Am)

i – V7 – i – bII – i … (Am, E7, Am, Bb, Am)

i – iv – i – bII – i … (Am, Dm, Am, Bb, Am)

i – bIII – bvii – i … (Am, C, Gm, Am)

I – bII – I – bII … (A, Bb, A, Bb) (Major substitution for the I chord)

Lydian (#4) – 4th scale degree root (in F Major, that’s Bb)

I – II – I – II (whole step up then back – repeats) … (Bb, C, Bb, C)

I – II – I – II – #iv – V – #iv – V – I … (Bb, C, Bb, C, Em, F, Em, F, Bb)

I – vi – II – V – I … (Bb, Gm, C, F, Bb)

I – V – I – II – I … (Bb, F, Bb, C, Bb)

I – II – vii – I … (Bb, C, Am, Bb)

I – II – V – I … (Bb, C, F, Bb)

I – II – IV – V – I … (Bb, C, Eb, F, Bb) (Major substitution 1/2 step down for IV chord)

Mixolydian (b7) – 5th scale degree root (in F Major, that’s C)

I – bVII – I – bVII – I … (C, Bb, C, Bb, C)

I – vi – IV – V – bVII – I … (C, Am, F, G, Bb, C)

I – IV – I – bVII – I … (C, F, C, Bb, C)

I – ii – IV – bVII – I … (C, Dm, F, Bb, C)

(note – a Dom7 chord form I7 will often be used for the I Major)

Aeolian (natural minor scale – b3, b6, b7) – 6th scale degree root (in F Major, that’s D)

i – bVI – bVII – i … (Dm, C, Bb, Dm)

i – iv – v – i … (Dm, Gm, Am, Dm)

i – iv – V7 – i … (Dm, Gm, C7, Dm)

i – bIII – i – bVII – i … (Dm, F, Dm, F, Dm)

Locrian (b2, b3, b5, b6, b7) – 7th scale degree root (in F Major, that’s E)

i° – bvii – i° – bvii – i° … (E°, Dm, E°, Dm, E°)

i° – bV – i° – bV – i° … (E°, Bb, E°, Bb, E°)

i° – biii – i° – bII – i° … (E°, Gm, E°, F, E°)

i° – biii – bvii – i° … (E°, Gm, Dm, E°)

Notes:

Roman numerals shown in capitals represent Major chords

Roman numerals in lower case represent minor chords

A circle following a Roman numeral means a diminished chord

Also, even though I’ve written these progressions to start and end on the 1 chord, you can simply skip the last 1 chord & cycle back to the beginning of each progression to keep them going for more practice.

Notice that the major modes – Ionian, Lydian and Mixolydian – all use a Major chord for the 1 chord, while all the minor modes – Dorian, Phrygian and Aeolian – all use a minor chord for the 1 chord.  And that Locrian uses a Diminished chord for the 1 chord.  Thus, the type of 1 chord the progression is based on is a big clue in determining which modes will work (but just keep in mind that sometimes progressions will not start on the 1 chord).  If you have a minor progression using a minor chord form for the 1 chord – pick a minor mode to solo over the entire progression and adjust it as necessary to accommodate any “outside” chord tones!

©Beth Isbell 2010

A three time finalist in the USA Songwriting Contest & a TAXI Top 10 Pick, Beth Isbell’s guitar playing, vocal delivery & songwriting have been described by national music press as “innovative,” “edgy,” “subversive,” “alternative art at its best!” She’s the frontperson & guitarist of several successful local Texas bands, with a successful solo USA acoustic tour, & highly acclaimed CD releases in multiple genres spanning from psychedelic, indie, blues rock, & blues to Americana, folk & country. You can contact & keep up with her on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/bethisbell

A Simple Way to Understand Modes for Guitar – Part 3 was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Any of the modes can be played over their corresponding chord in the diatonic progression for the key for the song you’re playing, or it’s common extensions. And the modes are often used this way to outline an individual chord when soloing. For example:

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Mode — Basic Triad  -  7th  -   9th  -   11th  -   13th   (i.e. the available extensions)

Ionian — Major triad       Maj7     Maj9     Maj11       Maj13

Dorian — minor triad         m7       m9          m11          m13

Phrygian — minor triad     m7      m7b9      m11b9   m11b9b13

Lydian — Major triad         Maj7    Maj9       Maj7#11   Maj13#11

Mixolydian — Major triad    7          9                11             13

Aeolian — minor triad          m7      m9           m11           m11b13

Locrian — diminished triad     m7b5      m7b5b9      min11b5b9      min11b5b9b13

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Notice from this chart that when you are playing over a Major, Maj7, Maj9 chord – you have two primary modal choices that fit – Ionian and Lydian. If the fourth (or 11th) of the chord is raised, Lydian may work better, but in most cases, your primary choice should be the Ionian mode, which is the parent major scale.

On the minor side, for a minor m7 m9 m11 chords you also have two primary modes to choose from – Dorian or Aeolian. So if the chord is Major and particularly if its extension contains a major 7 note (as opposed to a b7 note), you should consider playing either the Ionian or Lydian mode over it. If the chord is minor (& the chord or progression does not contain a b9), you should consider playing either the Dorian or Aeolian mode over it.

Mixolydian mode is an often used variation of a major sounding mode used primarily to emphasize Dominant 7 ( b7) chords.  It emphasizes the whole step (two frets) below the root of the chord in the Major scale on which it is constructed, and it differs from the I and IV chords, since there is only a 1/2 step (one fret) below their roots to the next Major scale note. Think about it, there is a major 7 note 1/2 step (one fret) below the I of the I chord, and there is a major 3 note 1/2 step (one fret) below the 4th degree of the scale which forms the root of the IV chord;  … but, the 5th note degree (V) of the standard major scale is always a whole step (two frets) above the 4th note/degree of the scale, so it makes sense to incorporate that significant one fret v. two fret difference when constructing our modal scale on the root of the V chord from the 5 of the major scale a whole step (two frets) down to the 4, or in mixolydian mode, we would say from the 1/root to the b7.

Phrygian is a minor sounding mode used to emphasize a flat 9 (or flat 2) note in a minor chord, or a 1/2 step move from the i or I chord to a II chord.

Locrian is the diminished mode used to emphasize a diminished chord, i.e. where the fifth is flatted (b5). You see this most often in jazz.

The modes are often used in this chord specific way to outline an “outside” chord that does not fit the diatonic chords of the key of the song or the key on which the mode primarily being used over the song or progression is based. In this event, we would pick a mode based on the root of the “outside” chord. For example, since we’re in F Major, if an A Major chord is inserted (instead of the diatonic A minor), it has a Major 3rd, instead of the expected minor 3rd, so we might use a major mode rooted on the A to outline the unique flavor of that “outside” chord – perhaps A Ionian (i.e. A major) or A Lydian (constructed in E major), or even A Mixolydian (constructed in D Major) if the progression lends itself to the sound of a Dominant), since all three of those major modes contain a C# (the major 3rd of our A chord). Choosing one of the three major modes of the root to play over any Major chord would nicely emphasize the Major 3rd of that chord.

Similarly, where the “outside” chord is a minor chord, we might want to consider the natural minor mode constructed from the relative Major of the root of the minor chord; for example, if the “outside” chord was a Dm, we might look at D Aeolian mode constructed in the key F Major. Or perhaps D Dorian mode, since D is the 2nd degree of the C major scale and Dorian is also a minor sounding mode. Or even D Phrygian, the other minor sounding mode (constructed in Bb Major), if we were looking for a more exotic flavor emphasizing the flat 9 (Eb note) which occurs in that particular mode. Notice that all three of these minor mode scales – D Aeolian, D Dorian, and D Phrygian – all have the minor 3rd or b3 of our Dm chord (F) in them, even though they are all constructed from and relate to completely different major scales.

When the modes are used in this chord specific way, we generally should strive to pick a mode which picks up any chord tones “outside” the main key of the song, but yet maintains the overall mood of the song or progression, unless we are purposefully trying to create tension to be resolved later in the progression.

Remember, some modes are major and some modes are minor.  The Dorian, Phrygian & Aeolian modes are minor sounding modes. The Ionian, Lydian, Mixolydian modes are Major sounding modes. (The Locrian mode obviously sounds diminished!). So if you’re trying to decide which mode fits the chord, or even the entire song or progression, you’re playing over, if it’s a minor chord, or even an entire song in a minor key, then it’s mostly likely going to be one of the three minor modes – Dorian, Phrygian or Aeolian.

If it’s a Major chord, or a Major key song, then most likely it’s going to be one of the three Major modes – Ionian, Lydian, or Mixolydian. That certainly helps narrow down your choices on which mode to use! And chances are once you get it down to just the three minor modes or the three major modes, as a practical matter only one or two of the remaining three choices is going to best work over the song progression anyway!

(Note – there are some excellent charts demonstrating this major & minor mode grouping concept at this website )

Finally, the unique sound of each mode is created by the interaction of its parent major scale (i.e. the major scale from which it is constructed) against the chord or chords that it is being played over!  It does not matter where you start or stop the scale. In other words, you do not need to start & stop on the root note of the mode.  You can even skip notes or play licks using only some of the notes of the modal scale.  All that matters is the application of the modal scale over its parent diatonic chord or a progression or song which sounds as if it revolves around that diatonic chord. For example, if we play G Dorian mode of the F Major scale over a Gm chord, you can start on any note of the scale over that Gm chord and resolve to any note of the scale & still get Dorian. However, if you play G Dorian mode of the F Major scale over an F chord, and you play from G to G trying to make it Dorian, it will instead produce an Ionian sound and be in Ionian mode.  Simply playing from the second degree of F Major (G) to its octave will not produce Dorian mode unless you’re doing so over a Gm chord or a progression which emphasizes the sound of and/or resolves to the Gm Chord;  if you play it over an F chord, you get Ionian.  It’s not where you start or stop that produces a mode, but the interaction of scale against chord!  Or, if you’re just playing with a bass player, against the root note of the chord.

In the next article of this series, we’ll talk about the much more confusing and complicated scenario of when to use a mode over a longer progression or sequence of chords, or even over an entire song.

©Beth Isbell 2010

A three time finalist in the USA Songwriting Contest & a TAXI Top 10 Pick, Beth Isbell’s guitar playing, vocal delivery & songwriting have been described by national music press as “innovative,” “edgy,” “subversive,” “alternative art at its best!” She’s the frontperson & guitarist of several successful local Texas bands, with a successful solo USA acoustic tour, & highly acclaimed CD releases in multiple genres spanning from psychedelic, indie, blues rock, & blues to Americana, folk & country. You can contact & keep up with her on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/bethisbell

A Simple Way to Understand Modes for Guitar – Part 2 was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

How to Build Your Own Modal Scales Using Diatonic Chords

Basic music theory says the diatonic chord progression built from notes of its parent major scale is I ii iii IV V (or V7) vi & the vii chord is diminished … or, 1 Major, 2 minor, 3 minor, 4 Major, 5 Major, 6 minor, 7 diminished – all built in order on the notes of the major scale.

So play those chords in key of F major … F, Gm, Am, Bb, C, Dm, Edim.
These are the “diatonic” chords in the key of F major. The root, 3, and 5, of each diatonic chord will consist ONLY of notes from its major scale.

Now, just play the top 3 (big strings) of each chord – i.e. turn them all into power chords – F5, G5, A5, Bb5, C5, D5, and then an E dim chord only using top 3 big strings (0120XX or since this time our chord is rooted on the 12th fret of the big E string 12 13 14 12 X X). Ok, with me so far? Good.

Now we start with the fact that the major scale is played over the I chord, in this case F. That is … F, G, A, Bb, C, D, E, (F)

The major scale is the first mode – the Ionian Mode! Your first mode!

(Since I don’t have the ability in this program to include diagrams of the fretboard or tab to give you scale patterns, here’s a link really helpful site that will do just that … in this case, for the Ionian mode … I love the fact that they include a sweep pattern version for each modal scale!)

The second mode or Dorian Mode only uses notes from the F major scale – our main key for purposes of this article … so the second note of the F major scale is G. If we create a scale starting with G (but only using notes from the major scale of F) and ending on G, we get the G Dorian scale, or second mode of the F major scale.

Here’s a good simple way to look at it, and will make it easier to construct any modal scale on the fly by simply remembering what key the song is in (or the major scale on which the mode you’re working in is constructed) & the diatonic chords based in that key (in this case, F major):

As to the Gm (or G5) chord, play the F (or F5) below it & the Am (or A5) chord above it – starting with the G root on the third fret of the Sixth string (or Big E string) play up to the octave of it – the G (5th Fret) on the fourth string (i.e., the D string) – in other words, let’s build a seven-note scale from the sixth string root to the fourth string root (i.e. * an 8 note scale if you include the root again at the top of your scale) – but use only the notes available in the Gm chord or the adjacent diatonic chord below it (F) or the two chords above it (Am & Bb) … Voila! You’ve just built a scale from G to G, sounding in and utilizing the G Dorian Mode (the Second Mode of F Major)!

Now, let’s repeat this process for each diatonic chord up the scale - using only one or two fret moves (half or whole steps). And you should include the notes that are available and easiest to access from the diatonic chord you’re working with and the two diatonic chords located immediately above and below it that chord, creating the easiest path from the sixth string root note to the fourth string root.  And, to make it even easier since we’re on the three lowest strings, you only need to use power chords (root, fifth, root).

(*Note – When you get to the final vii(dim) chord, the formula is R b5 R, so you’ll have to make that one minor adjustment – hint: it’s the 6th string root diminished chord form we discussed earlier in this article! Once you master this concept, you can then try to work out the same idea for the adjacent smaller sets of three strings each in order, this time using the full chord shapes for each diatonic chord – not just power chords like in this example which is just designed to get you started.)

What you’ll notice is that you’ll necessarily have to adjust the major scale normally associated with each root note you’re working with to accommodate the notes in the diatonic chords above & below the one you’re focusing on … which “alters” their normal major scale to fit into the F major scale & corresponding diatonic chords from the F major scale. The combination of playing such a modal scale over a progression which is centered around the diatonic chord on which it is built is what gives each “mode” it’s unique sound & flavor!

The result of working through this process are the creation of modes!

A Closer Examination of Construction of Modal Scales

While each mode is built on the notes of the exact same major scale and its diatonic chords, in this case F Major, because each mode has a different scale degree as its starting and ending point, often called their “tonal center,” they each have their own unique flavor and sound. (Remember, we already covered the Ionian Mode of the F Major scale above).

2nd scale degree root – Dorian (G, A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G)
(notice this scale differs from G major by substituting a b3 & b7)
DORIAN SCALE PATTERNS TO PRACTICE

3rd scale degree root – Phrygian (A, Bb, C, D, E, F, G, A)
(notice this scale differs from A major by substituting a b2, b3, b6 & b7)
PHRYGIAN SCALE PATTERNS TO PRACTICE

4th scale degree root – Lydian (Bb, C, D, E, F, G, A, Bb)
(notice this scale differs from Bb major by substituting a #4)
LYDIAN SCALE PATTERNS TO PRACTICE

5th scale degree root – Mixolydian (C, D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C)
(notice this scale differs from C major by substituting a b7)
MIXOLYDIAN SCALE PATTERNS TO PRACTICE

6th scale degree root – Aeolian (D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C, D)
(notice this scale differs from D major by substituting a b3, b6 & b7)
AEOLIAN SCALE PATTERNS TO PRACTICE

7th scale degree root – Locrian (E, F, G, A, Bb, C, D, E)
(notice this scale differs from E major by substituting a b2, b3, b5, b6 & b7)
LOCRIAN SCALE PATTERNS TO PRACTICE

(Note – Each mode is named based on the first note of the mode scale, so even though all these modes in this example are in the Key of F Major, the modes would be named F Ionian (or the F Major scale), G Dorian, A Phrygian, Bb Lydian, C Mixolydian, D Aeolian, and E Locrian. …. This method of naming the modes is really important to remember!)

Modes are simply an alteration of the major scale of the root note to accommodate diatonic chords from the key of the song that you’re playing over (or choosing to work with for a particular segment of the song). More simply, all the modal scales must include all the notes of the major scale on which the mode is constructed – and only those notes! In this case or key that we’re using for study purposes in this article, the major scale on which our modes are based & must always accommodate is F.

©Beth Isbell 2010

A three time finalist in the USA Songwriting Contest & a TAXI Top 10 Pick, Beth Isbell’s guitar playing, vocal delivery & songwriting have been described by national music press as “innovative,” “edgy,” “subversive,” “alternative art at its best!” She’s the frontperson & guitarist of several successful local Texas bands, with a successful solo USA acoustic tour, & highly acclaimed CD releases in multiple genres spanning from psychedelic, indie, blues rock, & blues to Americana, folk & country. You can contact & keep up with her on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/bethisbell

A Simple Way to Understand Modes for Guitar – Part 1 was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Paradigms

Teaching involves methods and systems and most methods, and teachers, base their student’s major scale studies around these patterns. But there is a danger in this system of teaching because what a student comes to believe is that these five basic patterns are the only way to play these scales. In truth, these five patterns are really just paradigms. A paradigm is like a map, but maps are not the terrain, only one representation of it. There are other ways to see the terrain. So when we teach our students the five standard patterns, we run the risk of forcing them to believe that they are the best ones or the only ones.

The reality is that the more ways you can play your scales, the better you will become at using the entire range of your neck. What if I asked you to come up with 20 ways to play a C major scale? What could you come up with? I think the five pattern paradigm is fine for beginners, but I also think that I owe my students the simple advice that there comes a time when they need to unlearn them as well. A good way to unlearn patterns is to learn new ones. After a while, all the patterns you know will overlap and you will simply be able to visualize the whole scale all over the neck, from the lowest to the highest point on your neck.

Let me start by asking you to learn the five standard patterns below. I wouldn’t rush to the other patterns until you are completely confident that you can play the standard ones first. If you don’t know these patterns now, just bookmark this page and come back to it in six months or a year. There are plenty of lessons on my site that deal exclusively with the standard five.

Here are the five basic patterns. The root note of the scale is represented by the black circles:

Pattern 1

Pattern 2

Pattern 3

Pattern 4

Pattern 5

How to practice the patterns in this lesson:

I’m going to base all of my ideas off of the 6th string root for the key of C. The standard pattern for this root note on this string is called pattern 4 as it is the 4th pattern of the major scale from the open position C major scale.

This is what you should do to make the most of this lesson:

• Memorize one pattern at a time.
• Practice the pattern to a C major chord progression or over a one chord modal vamp like Dmin7 or Fmaj7 for example.
• Figure out the other patterns using the same concept.
• Move on to other keys.

Standard Major Scale Pattern (4)

As my name suggests, this pattern is a common pattern. It is easy to play because there are no big stretches involved. There are three notes played on five of the strings (6, 5, 4, 3 and 1) and two notes played on one string (the 2nd string). There are no real disadvantages to the pattern other than being the standard pattern, meaning that most guitarists use the pattern exclusively.

2-Note Per String Major Scale Pattern

Using the same root, you could play a pattern made exclusively of two notes per string. This pattern is very uncommon, which is a good thing. The pattern lends itself to very uncommon phrasing. It is interesting to imagine that the standard pentatonic scale patterns are all two note per string patterns. Unlike the standard patterns above, you will find that using this strategy, you can make seven different patterns rather than five. The disadvantage of these 2-note per string patterns is that you can’t get two full octaves. But by forcing yourself to use them you will find that play lines that would be very unnatural to play utilizing the standard patterns:

3-Note Per String Major Scale Pattern

The 3-note per string pattern is very common and there are some guitarists who might even tell you that these are the standard patterns. The advantage of these patterns is that having three notes per string, they lend themselves well to players who utilize economy picking. Pick the scale from the lowest note to the highest using a down-up-down, down-up-down picking pattern and you will see what I mean. The 3-note per string patterns also lend them selves well to legato type picking. You can practice legato easily with these patterns by simply using different combinations of the three notes. For example, picking each string only once and using hammer-ons and pull-offs, start by playing the 1st, 3rd and 2nd note (your index, pinky and middle finger) on the 6th string. Play the same thing on every consecutive string.

Next play a 3-1-2 combination (pinky, index and middle finger). How many combinations of three can you make? 1-2-3, 1-3-2, 2-1-3, 2-3-1, 3-2-1, 3-1-2, etc. The disadvantage is that the pattern having the same amount of notes on each string, you run the risk of playing continuous repeating patterns, which could become repetitive:

4-Note Per String Major Scale Pattern

The 4-note per string pattern is more difficult to use and visualize but I have seen it used exclusively by certain maniac guitarists. You can try playing the scale using all four fingers on your left hand. You can also slide somewhere in the scale which is what I do. For example, play the C note on the 6th string with your index finger and slide it up to the 10th fret. Play the next two notes with your 3rd and 4th finger before moving on the 5th string. Or you could play the first three notes and slide your pinky up for the last note. The advantage of using this pattern is that you can cover three octaves. The disadvantage is that the 4-note per string patterns somewhat difficult to memorize:

Open-String Hybrid Major Scale

I think this is a great pattern because it takes advantage of the design of the guitar. I’ve included the tab for the pattern below because the diagram by itself is confusing. But basically the rule for this pattern is that you have to use an open string when you can. For example the D note that is usually played in major scale pattern 4 on the 10th fret 6th string gets replaced with the open 4th string.

Now some of you might be asking why would you want to make it so difficult? The answer is because letting the notes ring together creates an interesting effect that only the guitar can do. Country guitarists have been using this technique forever. The disadvantage of this pattern is that unlike the other patterns it doesn’t repeat and obviously this concept will only work in keys that have at least some of the open string notes (E-A-D-G-B):

The Ultimate Scale Pattern

At some point in time, you will hopefully be able to see the whole scale as one big pattern. There are ways to practice this as well. Force yourself to play up and down the neck using only certain sets of strings. For example improvise over a C major chord progression using only the 2nd and 3rd string:

Chris Juergensen is in constant demand as a sideman, front man and clinician. He currently divides his time between Tokyo and Los Angeles where he continues to write, record, play and teach. Besides various session work, he has released three solo CDs and has two books published. Chris Juergensen Official Website: http://chrisjuergensen.com

Breaking the Major Scale Pattern Paradigm was written by Chris Juergensen for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Today we’re going to look at little harder at how we choose a scale to use as a solo. And, hopefully, we’ll see that there can be more than meets the eye.

To make this lesson somewhat practical and useful, why don’t we use a typical rock ‘n’ roll chord progression? How about C to Bb to F to C, say four beats (one measure) each? You can go ahead and give the final MP3 file a listen if you’d like, just to get a handle on what we’ll be working on.

You can hear that C major is definitely what we’d call the tonal center. But is it the key of this progression? We can certainly make an argument for it, and chances are, if you were looking at sheet music for something like this (maybe Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Taking Care of Business, for example) the key signature would indicate C major by having no sharps or flats and adding the Bb to the Bb chord by means of accidentals. You can also find a surprising number of books where a chord progression like this would be written out in the key signature of F, which has one flat (Bb). But C is certainly our center, our sense of “home,” if you will.

Okay, so we have a key. One step down and several decisions to go…

This particular progression, going from the root (I) to the flat seven (bVII) to the four (IV) chord, is very common in rock music. Without batting an eye, you could probably come up more than a dozen songs you know that use it in one form or another. You’ll also find this chord progression in country and folk and even in some guitar studies by the immortal Fernando Sor, which means that people living around 1800 were not strangers to these sounds.

Thinking in terms of the typical rock guitarist, we might automatically reach into our “toolbox” and pull out the C major pentatonic scale. In case you’ve forgotten (even though it’s not been all that long since we used it last!), the notes are C, D, E, G and A.

Looking at the make up of the chords in the chord progression, we find the following:

C major contains the notes C, E and G

Bb major contains the notes Bb, D and F

F major contains the notes F, A and C

While the major pentatonic is not going to cause us a lot of stress, there aren’t a lot of nice target notes from which to choose. By “nice,” in this case, I’m talking about root notes of the chords. There’s C (and E and G, too), but no Bb or F. We do have the D (the third of the Bb chord) and A and C (the third and fifth, respectively, of F). You could use this scale but you will probably find yourself unhappy with how it ultimately sounds. Don’t take my word for it. Since you’ve downloaded the last MP3, give it a try and then come back to the discussion.

Alright, then, the C major pentatonic was a bust, so let’s try the C minor pentatonic. I’m sure you remember this one:

Because we’ve given a very nice rock feeling to this chord progression, using the blues idea of “Minor pentatonic over a major key” works pretty well here. Have a listen:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

We’ve got blue notes Eb (flat third) and Bb (flat seventh) to play over the C chord, and there’s Bb (root) and F (fifth) of the Bb chord and also F (root), C (fifth) and Eb (flat seventh) for the F chord. All and all, this doesn’t do that bad of a job.

Can we do more? Certainly, we can. Take a look at all the notes of our chords again, this time written out as they would appear in a scale:

C D E F G A Bb

Does this look at all familiar? Except for the last note (Bb), everything else is a note of the C major scale. There is, of course, one major scale that has only one flat in it, and that is the F major scale. You’re probably more familiar with it if we start on the root:

F G A Bb C D E

How about that? Of course, you’ve already read A La Modal or any of our other Guitar Noise lessons on modes, so you know that when we use the F scale but start out on the C note, it’s technically the C Mixolydian Mode. And in root six position on our guitar we’ll find it here:

This is an interesting mix because it gives us more target notes, but eliminates many of the “blue notes” because we’re using E instead of the Eb of the C minor pentatonic. Consequently, you get a markedly different feel when using the C Mixolydian, as evidenced here:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Interesting, isn’t it? Even though we’ve got the same progression and I’m using the same style to solo with, this has more of a pop feel and less of the blues edge to it. Many rock guitarists find the Mixolydian mode fits very well into quite a lot of their music.

Of course, you can always decide to “mix and match,” using the C minor pentatonic for a phrase and then switching off to the C Mixolydian for another. But for those of you who enjoy playing one single scale, then I would ask you to think back just two lessons ago in this series and perhaps consider the C Dorian scale, which would be a C scale, only in the key of Bb (which has two flats, Bb and Eb):

Here you’ve got the two blue notes of the C minor pentatonic, plus you’ve got the Eb as a blue note for the F chord, but you still get all three notes of the Bb and F major chords as you did with the C Mixolydian. Here’s what a solo in this scale sounds like:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You might notice on this solo that I went out of my way to use the D note as a target to make things even more interesting. D on top of the C chord makes Cadd9, and over F creates F6. It is, of course, the third in a Bb chord.

And, as always, I cannot stress enough that these are still only a few of the possible choices available to you, not even counting combining scales, as mentioned just a few paragraphs ago.

And, again as always, this is why it’s vital for you to take the time to experiment and noodle and, most important of all, to listen to what you’re doing so that you can get a feel for what you want and when you want it. Here is a backing track so that you can practice the scales we mentioned, plus any other scales or combinations of scales you might find intriguing:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this and I hope that you are starting to get (or getting more of an idea) that there will almost always be a multiple choice answer to the eternal question of “which scale should I play!”

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

You may not think that lead guitarists have to concern themselves with rhythm, but you’d be dead wrong. Rhythm sets up the whole concept of phrasing and phrasing is what makes a solo sound like a solo and not someone practicing a scale.

And now this bit from the fourth lesson, Combining the Major Scale with the Minor Pentatonic:

…let’s take a brief step sideways to think a moment about what makes music interesting. At its heart, music is a constant shift between disharmony and harmony, what’s generally referred to in terms of “tension and resolution.” Good melodies, for example, don’t simply use notes taken from the chords of the chord progression of a song. It’s the interplay of the melodic notes against the chord progression that creates this give-and-take of tension and resolution.

Solos do this as well. Otherwise all soloing would be nothing but chord arpeggios. And we would be reading a lesson on “Turning Arpeggios into Solos” and not “Turning Scales into Solos!”

Alright then, let’s chat about “target notes.” And to do that, I’m going to quote Guitar Noise Moderator Wes Inman, who recently made a great post about this concept on the Guitar Noise Forum:

I am a big believer in “target notes.” This is when you pick specific notes to play over specific chords in your progression. I don’t like to play notes nilly willy; I like the solo to lead the listener’s ear. This is a method that will help you pull off a good solo every time, but it is not something you want to do every solo. You don’t want to sound like you are using a method. So, think of it as a tool. Once you get familiar with these target notes, you will remember them when you are improvising.

Now I’d like you to do me a favor. You’re going to use the same chord progression that served as our “backing track” in the first two lessons on this series (C to Am to F to G) and improvise a little solo, using the C major pentatonic scale. For those of you who may have forgotten it, here are the notation and tablature to help you out:

Chances are likely that when you’re playing this, you don’t run into a lot of tension or dissonance. That’s one of the reasons why the pentatonic scale is such a popular tool for a soloist. Remember that the notes that make up these chords are as follows:

The notes of the C major pentatonic scale are C, D, E, G and A. That gives you all three notes of the first two chords in our progression – C (C, E and G) and Am (A, C and E), plus two notes each of the F chord (A and C) and G chord (G and D). These notes, when played over the chords which they are a part of, are your safe notes.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg, if you’ll pardon the cliché. And this is also where having either a little chord theory or a lot of listening experience will come in handy. You might know from your own reading or experience, or by availing yourself of the many wonderful articles here at Guitar Noise, that you can add just about any note to a major or minor chord and come up with an embellished chord, such as a sixth or seventh or major seventh. If you want to catch up quickly on this idea, then give Building Additions (and Suspensions) a read.

Now let’s look one more time at our C minor pentatonic notes and examine how they relate to the chords they are not a part of. C, for instance, is part of the C chord (it’s the root), the Am chord (it’s the third) and the F chord (it’s the fifth). It’s not a part of the G chord. In relation to the G chord, C is the eleventh. More important to the soloist, playing a C while the backing personnel are playing a G chord gives the impression of turning the G chord into Gsus4. This is especially true if the backing people are playing G5 (the G power chord, if you will).

So give a listen to what I do in this MP3 example:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here I’m using C fairly constantly, but I’m especially emphasizing it as my target over the G chord and I hang on to it when the chord then changes to C. This is known as sustaining a note. We’ve talked about this before in respect to chords (check out the article Sustained Tones: An Animated Discussion for more in regard to chords) but here we’re using single notes from the soloist to create the sustained chord. Cool, no?

You can, of course, do this with other notes from the C major pentatonic scale. Let’s look at each and see how it relates to the other chords that they are not already a part of:

• D is the ninth of C, the fourth of Am, and the sixth of F
• E is the major seventh of F and the sixth of G
• G is the seventh of Am and the ninth of F
• A is the sixth of C and the ninth of G

So now I’m going to try another solo over our progression, this time deliberately targeting notes that are not part of chords and then holding those notes out over a chord change. Maybe two…

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I don’t know about you, but to me this is beginning to sound a little more polished. It’s certainly more interesting than targeting only my “safe notes.” And, obviously, things get even more interesting should you decide to go from using the C major pentatonic scale to playing the full C major scale, which adds the F and B notes:

• F is the fourth of C, the sixth of Am, and the seventh of G
• B is the major seventh of C, the ninth of Am, and the flatted fifth (a blue note) of F. And, as you already know, it’s the third of G

Having all the notes of the C major scale at our disposal will create even more interesting target notes when playing over our chord progression. In case you’ve forgotten where the C major scale is, here’s a reminder:

And here is a brief example of using all these notes over a solo:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This final solo sounds, again to my ears, even better than the last one. There’s a lot of interesting things going on and while I am simply using a basic scale pattern, it doesn’t sound like someone just tossing out a scale and hoping it can masquerade as a solo.

One vital aspect about using sustained notes as part of your soloing technique is that it forces you to hang onto a note, to breathe, to create a phrase instead of simply plastering the allotted space with every note available. The solo becomes something that, as Wes aptly put it, “leads the listener’s ear.” There’s an art to what’s known in music theory as “voice leading,” and good guitarists are always aware of that. It’s part of what can make a solo memorable.

As always, here is a backing track so that you can practice creating your own magic:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Next time out, we get back in step with modes, looking on various ways to spot clues in chord progressions that will help you determine which scale might work best as a choice for soloing.

Also, we’ll get to see firsthand the trap that we’ve led ourselves into by our very practicing of scales. Interested?

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Getting these two thoughts into your head is essential if you want to be able to solo over any song. If the point hasn’t been driven home yet then, again hopefully, this latest installment will help you drive the point home.

On the surface, this should seem easy enough. We’re going to use a simple progression of two chords and figure out what will be the best way to solo over it. I should rephrase that, as not all of us are ever going to agree as to what is the “best way” to solo. How about we say instead that we’re going to look at various options, each valid in their own way? Ready?

Okay, our chord progression will be in four-four timing and will consist of one measure (four beats) of Dm and then one measure of G. That’s G major. If you’d like to hear it, skip down to the last MP3 file of this lesson. Be sure to right click it and save it to your computer so that you can play along with it later.

Again, it sounds pretty simple, right? But before we jump right in, let’s take a moment or two and think about what we’re going to do in terms of soloing.

First, we might want to think about what key this progression is in. D minor certainly seems like a good bet as things seems to focus around that D minor chord. But if we look carefully, we should see a flaw in that logic. Have you found it?

Maybe it would be good to back up a step and look at the chords themselves. Dm is made up of the notes D, F and A, while G is made from the notes G, B and D. We should all be agreed on that, right? Let’s take a look at all the notes:

D F G A B

Given this much information, we could just construct a scale from these notes. Because it has five notes, it’s certainly a pentatonic scale, but it doesn’t match any of the two pentatonic scales that we already know. The major pentatonic is the root, second, third, fifth and sixth. So if D is our root, the D major pentatonic is D, E, F#, A and B. The minor pentatonic is made up of the root, minor third, fourth, fifth and flat seventh, and if we again use D as our root, that would mean the D minor pentatonic is D, F, G, A and Bb. Neither of these is a match for what’s going on here.

As much as I hate to say it, this is where even the slightest bit of knowledge of music theory might be a big help. You would know, for instance, that the notes taken from our two chords would have to come from the key of C. Why? The first tip off is that there are no flats or sharps. You might argue that there could be a C# or an Eb, but I would point out to you that both the F and B are natural. The key of C has no flats or sharps. When we move to the key of G, which has one sharp, that sharp is F#. It has to be. There is no key signature that has only a C#. If we go in the other direction, the key that only has one flat is F and that note is Bb.

Another argument I might use is that the key of C is the only key where we’d be able to construct both the Dm and G chords out of the major scale, as you may have read in The Power of Three or in other theory articles we have here at Guitar Noise.

It’s situations like this where we have to make a great leap forward in our thinking. We have to learn that, sometimes, there is a difference between a key or key signature and a tonal center. People often use these two concepts interchangeably, but there will be occasions where you need to separate the two ideas.

So even though we have a progression where the two chords are taken from the key of C, the tonal center we are shooting for is D minor. What does this mean to us? Well, as mentioned earlier, we could create a new pentatonic scale, just for this occasion. Seems like a lot of time and effort though, especially since we’ve already learned our pentatonic scales so well.

How about this? Let’s try using the A minor pentatonic scale, since Am is the relative minor of the key of C. The notes of this scale, which are A, C, D, E and G, will certainly fit the bill because they are all in the key of C. I’m going to do a short solo using the “Root Six” position of the A minor pentatonic:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

How about trying the D minor pentatonic scale, which I’ll write out for you as well in “Root Six” position:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

That certainly sounds a little more like it. But I can’t help thinking that I still might have a better option.

And I do – the C major scale. It has all the notes of both chords of the progression, especially the B note (noticeably absent in both our previous pentatonic scales), which totally makes that G major chord sing out.

The trick, if you want to think of it, is that while we are using the C major scale, we’re actually going to target notes in both these chords, the Dm and G. If it helps (and it certainly helps many people), don’t think of this as the C major scale, but rather as the D Dorian scale. I’ve taken the liberty of writing this out as such:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Now, folks will endlessly argue about whether or not this scale is the C Major or the D Dorian, and you’re certainly welcome to add your two cents. For right now, though, I just want you to take the time to experiment with all three, to compare and contrast sounds, to listen to what aspects of each you like. Or don’t like.

In order to help you do so, here is an “extended” version of our chord progression, just for you to play over:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

One thing you should definitely take away from this lesson, though, is the idea that you can fall back on the Dorian mode whenever you run into this particular type of chord progression, going from a minor root (or tonal center) to the major fourth. Sure, you can certainly fall back on the tried and true minor pentatonic, but your ears may appreciate you adding the extra two notes you get from taking the full scale. Your audience might, too

While you’ve gotten quite a bit of information this time out, I also want to leave you thinking about this puzzle over what to call our last scale. You might want to take a moment or two and read up on modes here at Guitar Noise. The article A La Modal might be a good place to start.

And next time out, we’ll pick right up with this question, because I think that I may have an answer that will work for many of you. Also, we’ll get to see firsthand the trap that we’ve led ourselves into by our very practicing of scales. Interested?

As always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

Targeting a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Not surprisingly, if for no other reason than folks like to argue about almost anything, there are often disagreements over what notes, exactly, are used in the blues scale. Even music scholars don’t always see eye to eye on this topic. In their book, Music in Theory and Practice, Volume 1, authors Benward and Saker define the blues scale as the nine-note combination of the major scale and minor pentatonic that we examined in Example 3 of our last lesson, Combining the Major Scale with the Minor Pentatonic. Slightly confusing, no?

Here, we’re going to address what most musicians acknowledge as the “blues scale.” This is as good a place as any to mention that there is no such thing as a “major blues scale” or a “minor blues scale.” Just as we know there is no “major chromatic scale” or “minor whole note scale.” Like other scales, the blues scale follows a specific pattern and, also as with all other scales, we define that pattern in terms of the major scale. We’ll get to that definition in just a minute.

First, though, let’s take a moment and re-read what we know about blue notes, courtesy of Wikipedia:

In jazz and blues, a blue note (also “worried” note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres.

As we noted in The Major and The Minor, the third lesson in this series, the Wikipedia definition goes on to add a very important sentence: “The blue notes are usually said to be flattened third, flattened fifth and flattened seventh scale degrees.”

We already know a scale where we’ve made use of two of these three blue notes, and that’s the minor pentatonic. In case you’ve forgotten, here it is in the key of C:

You undoubtedly remember our discussion of how guitarists love to use the minor pentatonic scale over standard blues progressions in major keys because it contains a healthy dose of blue notes for each chord change. Looking at the notes used in our example of the C minor pentatonic scale:

C Eb F G Bb

We can see we have two blue notes of the C major scale, those being Eb (flatted third) and Bb (flatted seventh).

But while Meatloaf may sing, “two out of three ain’t bad,” we can take a moment and add the third blue note, the flatted fifth, to the minor pentatonic with relative ease. You can see in the following example that it doesn’t even involve a change of fingering:

Really nothing to it, is there? This example is how most musicians will define the blues scale. In other words, think of it as:

Root flat 3rd 4th flat 5th 5th flat 7th

Or, in perhaps easier terms, it’s the minor pentatonic with the flat 5th added to it. The real question, though, is “how does it sound when used over a typical twelve bar blues progression?” Well, I’m glad you asked:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As in our other lessons, I’m deliberately overplaying, not to mention I’m going out of my way to play a lot of the Gb notes in the C Blues scale in order to let you hear the particular flavor of this scale. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, as the saying goes, but it certainly allows you to add some interesting touches.

Just as in our past lessons in this series, it’s a good idea to just sit and play around with this scale, not only to get it into your fingers, but also to get it into your ears and your head. And, also just as in our past lessons, here’s an “extended version” of our blues in C chord progression for you to work with!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Because this last MP3 is about three minutes long, a good idea would be to try to cycle through the various scales you know – the major pentatonic, the minor pentatonic, the “combination” scale from our last lesson and now this blues scale. Listen to the notes each scale gives you, what type of mood (if any) a particular scale puts you in. The more music that’s in your head, the more color you can bring to your fingers.

Next time out we’re going to leave the blues for a bit, but not the minor pentatonic scale. And we’ll also be taking (yet) another look at the major scale and what a useful thing it is! In the meantime, and as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In jazz and blues, a blue note (also “worried” note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres.

Sort of continuing where we left off, I’d like to introduce you to the idea of combining scales. But before we move on, let’s take a brief step sideways to think a moment about what makes music interesting. At its heart, music is a constant shift between disharmony and harmony, what’s generally referred to in terms of “tension and resolution.” Good melodies, for example, don’t simply use notes taken from the chords of the chord progression of a song. It’s the interplay of the melodic notes against the chord progression that creates this give-and-take of tension and resolution.

Solos do this as well. Otherwise all soloing would be nothing but chord arpeggios. And we would be reading a lesson on “Turning Arpeggios into Solos” and not “Turning Scales into Solos!”

We got a front row seat for this in our last lesson when used the minor pentatonic scale to solo over the major chords of a typical twelve bar blues progression. Since we specifically used the C minor pentatonic scale (C, Eb, F, G and Bb) to solo over a progression with the chords C, F and G, we had blue notes of the C major scale – Eb (flatted third) and Bb (flatted seventh) – as well as a blue note of F scale (Eb being the flatted seventh) and two blue notes of G (Bb, which is the flatted third and F, which is the flatted seventh). Each chord of our blues progression was constantly being played against a number of blue notes that would then resolve into a note of the major chord.

But as interesting as each of these pentatonic scales is by itself, combining them gives you a much deeper palette of colors to work with.

Let’s take another look at the actual notes of the C major pentatonic scale:

C D E G A

And now let’s run through the notes of the C minor pentatonic scale:

C Eb F G Bb

This certainly gives us a lot more options. The playing off of the minor third against the major third (the Eb and E in the key of C) is something that you hear quite often in blues riffs.

Some folks like to go a step further, combining the entire major scale with the minor pentatonic. Doing so adds the major seven, which is the major third of the V chord (the B note of the G chord in our key of C) of our blues progression. Although this may seem like a lot of notes for a scale, it certainly adds a lot to our soloing options.

First, let’s take a look at the notes we’re talking about, still using the key of C major as our example:

C D Eb E F G A Bb B C

Now, let’s see where these would fall if we were using a Root Six based C major scale (plus the two blue notes Eb and Bb). First, we’ll look at the two octave C major scale itself:

So far, so good! Now, let’s add the blue notes taken from our C minor pentatonic scale. Since I’m planning on doing most of my soloing today on the high strings, we’ll add these blue notes only to the second octave:

Finally, let’s extend this scale up to the thirteen fret, which will give us a little more room to play with:

You should know the drill from here. Work through this “combined scale,” using both these last two examples, but focus on Example 3 most of all. This may seem hard to some of you as you’re used to scale patterns and now you’re likely to find yourself thinking in terms of the actual notes themselves. But that’s part of where we’re trying to go, so hang in there!

Then take a listen to the sort of thing you can do:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Yes, I’m still overplaying! But the interweaving of the major scale with the two notes taken from the minor pentatonic certainly does give this a lot of interesting things to say, doesn’t it? Playing both the Eb and E off of the C chord creates tension and release in the same phrase. It’s no wonder this sort of sound is used in so many blues solos.

Okay, your turn! Here’s an “extended version” of our blues in C chord progression for you to work with:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Remember that the whole purpose of this particular series of lessons is to demonstrate that even though we could use a single scale to base a solo on, there are all sorts of other possibilities. Up until this point we’ve examined only the major scale and the pentatonic, the latter in both major and minor forms. Now we’ve opened up a lot more potential by combining two scales.

Next time out, we’ll take a look at the “blues scale,” right after we get done arguing about what, exactly, the “blues scale” is!

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

To recap briefly, Choosing Colors, our first lesson in this series, introduced (or re-introduced) us to the Major scale and the Major Pentatonic Scale, which are the two important scales that most guitarists fall back on for soloing. In the sound files accompanying that lesson, we listened to the differences in the two scales when used for soloing over the same chord progression.

The second lesson, One Note at a Time, hopefully demonstrated that as you are learning your scales, you shouldn’t feel the need to cram every single note you’re learning into a solo. Phrasing, which we’ll be getting into big time a few lessons down the road, is more important than speed. That’s not to knock speed. People often mistakenly put speed into the same category as “unemotional” and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s phrasing that makes a solo sound like a solo and not like someone simply practicing his or her scales. And the speed you’re playing at doesn’t enter into it at all.

Well, that’s not totally true, and we’ll also be looking at that aspect of things three lessons from now.

Meanwhile, on with today’s work:

A lot of what we’ll cover today, in terms of the theory at least, we’ve gone over before. The Guitar Column, Scaling the Heights, contains much of the raw information that we’ll be examining, so you might want to take a moment or two and read (hopefully “re-read”) that particular lesson.

It might also be good to have a gentle reminder of what got this whole series of articles going in the first place! As with many lessons at Guitar Noise, an email is usually a good place to start:

Hi David,

I’ve read a few of your articles about constructing solos, and I appreciate the advice (thanks!). I would rate myself as an intermediate guitarist and am trying to branch out into building better solo skills. I have a fair grasp of scales and some modes of play. But I have a few questions on building solos:

It seems matching scales to a key doesn’t always work! For example, I’ve found simply using a G Major Pentatonic scale over a G-Major song doesn’t always sound right. Why doesn’t that always work? What would you say to help me build a better solo pattern?

Let’s examine the example cited:

…using a G Major Pentatonic scale over a G-Major song doesn’t always sound right…

While this statement raises many questions, I’d like to focus our attention on two: First, what do we mean when we talk about a “G-Major song?” and secondly, what do we mean when we say “doesn’t always sound right?”

Knowing a song is in the key of G Major should mean a few things to you. If you’ve read the Guitar Column Five To One, you are thinking that the G major chord is what gives the song is sense of tonality, of “home,” if you will. And, if you’ve read our other theory columns, you might also be thinking that there are certain chords that you are going to run into in the key of G major. The “I,” “IV” and “V” chords, for instance, are G, C and D (all major chords). The “ii,” “iii” and “vi” chords are Am, Bm and Em. These six chords are considered diatonic, which may sound like my beverage of choice, but really means that all the notes of these chords are taken from notes of the major scale in question. In this case, that means the G major scale. If you want to see how to come up with this yourself, take a look at the end of the section titled “Stackables” in the Guitar Column The Power of Three.

Chances are very likely that if you’re playing a song in the key of G, you’re going to run into the G, C and D chords more than anything else. For that matter, in whatever key you may find yourself playing, the “I,” “IV” and “V” chords usually are the ones you’ll find yourself playing most.

So, for the sake of keeping things simple (not to mention maintaining a balance with our past two lessons), let’s switch off to the key of C again. The “I,” “IV” and “V” chords in the key of C are C, F and G. We saw this in our previous lessons as we used the classic “I – vi – IV – V” chord progression (that being C to Am to F to G in the key of C) as an example to solo over. In the first lesson, you’ll remember we used both the C major and the C major pentatonic as our soloing scales, while in the second lesson we stuck strictly with the C major pentatonic. Things didn’t sound too bad, although I’m still getting emails from readers as to which scale they thing sounded better. Some liked the full major scale and some liked the pentatonic.

To me, these emails are fun because they aren’t really about which scale sounds better. They are about the readers and the music that sounds good to their individual pair of ears. Are you ready to try out another sound test and learn some more?

This time out, we’ll take a simpler chord progression, one using just the three primary chords of the C major scale – C, F and G. But in this lesson, we’re going to give the chord progression a bit of a blues feel, using a typical blues shuffle type pattern and a standard “Twelve Bar Blues” format. In case you’re not up to speed with knowing what Twelve Bar Blues is all about, not to worry! Just mosey on over to the Easy Songs for Beginners’ page and take a look at the lesson on Before You Accuse Me and then come right back.

Alright, then! In the key of C, the standard twelve bar blues progression would go like this:

Now, we could have all sorts of things go on in the last measure (also called the “turnaround”), but again, for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to flip to G in order to get back to the initial C in the first measure.

For our first two sound file examples, I’m going to play this twelve bar blues progression a total of three times, the third time ending on C in measure twelve instead of G in order to give us a sense of finality. In the final MP3 sound file, I’ll play the progression a total of six times.

Let’s start by trying out the C major pentatonic scale as our soloing tool. In the first MP3 sound file, I’ll use the C major pentatonic in “Root 6″ position and stay within the pattern we’ve learned. And if you’ve forgotten the C major pentatonic scale pattern, here it is in music notation and tablature:

Take a few moments and get yourself warmed up by running through the scale a few times. Then, when you’re ready, play along with the final MP3 file (be sure to download it to your computer so you can play it whenever you’d like) and see what you think. Or listen to my take on it (and remember I’m only going through the progression three times here):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As in our previous lessons, I feel a need to point out that I’m still overplaying! At this stage, I’m more concerned about hearing the notes and getting a feel for how this scale sounds as a soloing stage for this progression. What do you think? Do you like it? Or do you find it a little, lacking maybe?

Technically, there’s nothing wrong with what we did, so it should sound fine. But, for some of you anyway, you may find it a little lackluster. Perhaps the reason isn’t found in the chord progression or the key of the song, but rather in the style of the song itself? Okay, try to hang onto that thought while we do a lot of hopping around to gather information!

One of the major proponents of playing the blues is the use of what we call “blue notes.” Let’s borrow a definition from Wikipedia here:

In jazz and blues, a blue note (also “worried” note) is a note sung or played at a slightly lower pitch than that of the major scale for expressive purposes. Typically the alteration is a semitone or less, but this varies among performers and genres.

The Wikipedia definition goes on to say “The blue notes are usually said to be flattened third, flattened fifth and flattened seventh scale degrees.” This is another piece of information to set aside for the moment. When playing the blues, it’s the juxtaposition of the blue notes (flattened notes of the major scale) with the major chords that produces the “expressiveness” of the genre. And if the scale that we’re using to solo with contains only diatonic notes, notes found only in the major scale of the key then we’ve got no blue notes to work with. What’s a soloist to do?

The easiest (and most obvious) answer is to use another scale. And here’s where a surprising little bit of music theory magic comes into play. Going back to our Scaling the Heights lesson, we know that every major scale, even the pentatonic one, has a relative minor scale that uses the same notes. The playing pattern is actually the same; it’s just that the notes are different. Here is a generic diagram for the major pentatonic scale, using numbers of the scale degrees instead of notes:

If you compare this to our C major pentatonic example we used earlier, you’ll see it all makes sense. “R” is the “Root” note, C. “2″ is D (the second note of the D major scale). “3″ is E, “5″ is G and “6″ is A (again, E, G and A being the third, fifth and sixth notes of the C major scale, respectively.

Now look at the same pattern, this time using the numbered scale degrees of the minor pentatonic:

If we remember that the notes of the C major scale are C, D, E, F, G, A and B, then we know that the notes of the C minor pentatonic scale are C (“R” or “Root”), Eb (flatted third or “b3″ in the diagram), F (the fourth note or “4″), G ( the fifth note or “5″) and Bb (the flatted seventh or “b7″).

Translating that information to notation and tablature, we now have the C minor pentatonic scale in Root Six form:

So, again take a few moments and get yourself warmed up by running through the scale a few times. It’s simply the same pattern but in a different place on the fretboard of your guitar. That’s not too hard to take, is it?  Again, you can go right to the final MP3 (which is on your computer, right?) or listen to me giving it a run through here:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Now, how does this sound? Some of you may find it a lot more interesting and perhaps more “appropriate” to the music. In other words, it may sound “righter” than using the major pentatonic.

Why is that? Take another look at the actual notes of the C minor pentatonic scale:

C        Eb        F        G        Bb

Now think of the chords involved in our progression. C major is made up of C, E and G. In the C minor pentatonic scale, we have two blue notes of the C major scale – Eb (flatted third) and Bb (flatted seventh). Using these blue notes against the straight major chord sets up the “expressiveness,” or “blues-ness” if you will, that defines the feeling of blues in our ears. The Eb is also a blue note of F (the flatted seventh), while the Bb and F are both blue notes of G (flatted third and flatted seventh), so each chord in the progression is served a dollop of blue notes just by using this one scale.

In other words, if you have a song in a major key but it’s a blues-styled song (or you want to make it sound like a blues song), then you want to use the minor pentatonic scale of the major key in question to achieve that effect! Are you playing blues in A major? Try the A minor pentatonic scale.

Before I forget, here’s an “extended version” of our blues in C chord progression for you to work with!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Regardless of which scale you think sounds better, the main lesson here, as it has been with our other lessons in this series, is to listen to the differences and to develop a feel for each scale. Because you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? There are certainly still more choices to make! Next time out we will see what happens when we can’t make a choice!

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

As much as I like to joke about being a “deep end” learner, the joke being that once you get out of the canvas bag filled with cement cinder blocks it’s really not all that hard to swim, and as much as I think both methods have merits, there’s a lot to be said about learning at a pace that both suits you and makes sense.

Getting a handle on soloing can be a lot like learning to swim. While there’s a lot to learn, most of us would be happy, at least for starters, to simply not sink to the bottom. This series of lessons here at Guitar Noise is being written with the hopes that we can give you some tools so that you can get started on the wonderful world of soloing.

Hopefully, you’ve already read and worked on Choosing Colors, the first lesson in this series, which introduced us (or re-introduced us) to the Major scale and the Major Pentatonic Scale -two important scales that most guitarists fall back on for soloing. We also listened to the differences in the two scales when used for soloing over the same chord progression. And it’s cool because I’ve gotten email from folks in both camps – some favoring the sound of the pentatonic and some the standard major scale. That’s what makes the world go ‘round!

In this lesson, we’re going to stick with these two scales, not to mention the very same chord progression, but narrow our focus even more. One thing that throws many beginners is the fact that there are so many notes to play! Because of the emphasis on learning scales, we tend to think we need to throw in every note that we know. And nothing could be further from the truth.

So this time out, we’re going to first work with the idea of soloing with only two notes. Sound silly? Well, it can be. But think about this – by limiting the number of notes that you’re using, you can focus on two intertwining aspects of soloing that are far more important than speed and they are rhythm and phrasing.

You may not think that lead guitarists have to concern themselves with rhythm, but you’d be dead wrong. Rhythm sets up the whole concept of phrasing and phrasing is what makes a solo sound like a solo and not someone practicing a scale.

Some guitar teachers think these concepts are so important that when they get into the concept of soloing with their students, they start them out by playing a progression and allowing the student to use only one note for soloing. The idea is to make the note count by playing it in either a variety of rhythmic patterns that fit the mood of the progression example or by letting it ring out over a number of chord changes and create all sorts of interesting tonal moods.

But we’re going to go a little easier on you and let you use two notes for starters. Which two? Well, let’s take a quick look at our chord progression again and make some choices:

Just to get the ball rolling (or maybe just to show how lazy I am), I’m going to pick the notes

C and D for us to use on our solo. Why? Well, because they are the first two notes in both the C major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B) and the C Major Pentatonic Scale (C, D, E, G and A). Told you I was lazy!

Now we can pick any C and D notes anywhere on the fretboard, but I also want to work with getting comfortable up the neck a bit. So let’s use these C and D notes:

Okay, so let’s take these two notes and make up a solo by playing over our chord progression. Here’s an example I whipped up:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

If you’d like, go to the third MP3 file of this lesson and download it to your computer (or use the last MP3 file from the Choosing Colors lesson as it’s the same one!) and then give it a try.

Once again I want to point out that the object here is not to copy what I did. It’s to simply play around and for you to get a feel of what we’re trying to do here. Your sense of rhythm and phrasing is unique and you will undoubtedly come up with something far different than I did. Good!

Also, don’t be afraid of trying two different notes than the ones I chose. Changing even just one note will bring a whole new texture to the exercise, not to mention open up a host of other possibilities in terms of what you can play.

I also want to point out that I’m actually overplaying! Seriously. Just as in our last lesson, I simply want to try to give you a lot of ideas in a short period of time. You should, right now, experiment like crazy. Try to use these two notes as sparingly as possible. Try to use them as many times as you can. Make mental notes (or even write them down!) about what works and what doesn’t.

Most important of all, go out of your way to use different durations of notes – from whole notes to half notes to quarter notes to eighth and sixteenth notes – as well as making use of different durations of rests. Nothing sounds more like scales than playing every note at the same pace. Think of the very word “phrasing” and how it relates to speech. Some words or syllables are drawn out while others are clipped. You can convey a lot of emotion in how you play a single note.

Believe it or not, besides getting comfortable with the concepts of rhythm and phrasing, you are also developing your ears. You are hearing how different phrases sound and how they sound in relationship to the chord progression you’re playing. And, just as important, you are getting practice in expressing yourself. Put your emotion into the notes, even if there are only two of them, and you’ll sound like you have something to say.

After you’ve gone a couple of rounds with two notes (and remember to experiment with different combinations of notes), then try three or four. In our next example, I’m using four: C, D, E and G, in the following location on the fingerboard:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, you don’t have to worry about being fancy. The point is to hear what you can do and with how little one can make a solo that sounds like a solo. Don’t have to worry about using tons of notes at blinding speed, worry instead about making every note count.

Here, once again, is an “extended version” of our chord progression:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download this MP3 file to your computer and use it as a backing track while you play around. Start out with just two notes for the first few passes of the progression. Then add on a third, or a third and a fourth. Again, don’t feel you have to stick with my suggestions. Just pick notes from the C major scale and go to it! But don’t use more than four different notes for now, though!

Finally, you should also take the time to try out your notes at different points along the fingerboard. Stay in position for each set of four notes so that you develop a good sense of where those notes are in relationship to each other at the same area of the fretboard.

Okay, that should keep you more than occupied for this segment of this series of lessons on soloing. Best of luck with it and I look forward to hearing how you’re progressing.

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

• What is the major scale?
• How do I build minor scales?
• What are modes?
• How do I build modal scales?
• How do I take a scale and make it into a solo?
• How do I know what notes I can use in a solo?
• Which mode should I use?
• How do I get away from pentatonics when soloing?
• How do I move a scale from one key to another?
• How do I use scales to play guitar fills?
• If the major scale is comprised of 8 notes where is the 8th note?
• How are Indian notes matched with the western scale?
• What are some scales and chords used in celtic music?

What is the major scale?

The major scale consists of eight notes. The first three notes are whole steps, followed by a half step, then three more whole steps and then a final half step (remember that each fret on the guitar is a half step).

Using the key of C the scale is as follows:

To find out what all this knowledge is good for check out the article Theory Without Tears.

How do I build minor scales?

We know that for every major key, there is also a corresponding minor key. We also know (if we remember our discussion on relative minors in Happy New Ear) that, since C is the VI in the key of Eb major, C minor is the relative minor of Eb major. What you may not know is that there are three traditional minor scales for any given minor scale.

The natural minor scale is simply the C major scale written in the key of Eb major. It incorporates all the flats one finds in that key (Bb, Eb and Ab). If you can figure out what major key your relative minor belongs to, then you should be able to write out the natural minor scale without a problem.

And harmonic minor scales as well. The only difference between the harmonic minor scale and the natural minor scale is the VII note. The striking thing about this scale is the interval between the VI and the VII, now a step and a half. This gives the scale an eastern feel to it.

Melodic minor scales muddle things even further by having the gall to be totally different depending on which way you are going. The ascending scale is just the C major scale with a minor third instead of the regular third (Eb instead of E). The descending melodic minor scale is the same as the natural minor. This may sound silly, but I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the step by step (or half step in some cases) intervals in a descending natural or melodic minor scale are the same as the intervals in the ascending major.

To find get some clear examples and find out more on minor scales take a look at the article Scales Within Scales.

What are modes?

A lot of people look at modes as if it were a big mystery, but they are really a fairly simple concept once you learn how to use them on guitar. There are seven tones to the major scale hence there are seven modes to the major scale.

Here are the modes of the major scale.

You simply take a note out of the major scale and play it as if that where the root. So if you start on C and end on C you are in C ionian. Now to find your relative minor simply go down three scale degrees from your root or up five. So the Relative minor of Cmaj is Amin. To find you relative major if you are in minor do the opposite. It also sounds really cool to play the major scale and it’s relative minor ate the same time. This is called harmonizing.

Really there is no mystery in modes or theory at all. The only reason why there is a so called mystery is because for some reason people start off learning songs and generally all they ever do is learn songs and copy licks instead of actually learning their instrument.

For a more thorough examination of modes and their uses check out the article Modal Thinking.

How do I build modal scales?

In addition to the three minor scales (natural, harmonic and melodic), there are also quite a number of modal scales. “Modal” is one of those theory terms that gives people the willies. If you want a much more scholarly approach, I suggest you check out Jimmy Hudson’s column entitled Modal Thinking or pick up your favorite textbook. For me, it is easier to think in terms of food. Your C major scale is your steak or chicken or soup stock or whatever you decide to start out with (hey, I never said this was going to be a great analogy…). The various flats and sharps that you can throw in are simply spices that will gives different flavors to your scale depending on the combination of spices you decide to use.

Most people learn various modal scales in order to develop different style for leads and solos. Some prefer to use them in order to spice up their songwriting. Bass players can utilize them to create astonishingly beautiful bass lines. Anyway you look at it your knowledge of minor and modal will augment your abilities.

There are some practical examples and uses for modal scales in the article Scales Within Scales.

How do I take a scale and make it into a solo?

Most solos are the result of planning. The guitarists involved know how many measures are involved or what chord changes are taking place underneath the solo. The good lead guitarists will construct a solo, giving it the same qualities of a well-written song – a beginning, a middle and an end as well as points of dynamic tension and release. Leads generally fall into one of the following categories: “rhythmic,” “melodic,” “slashing” and “effects.” They’re pretty self-explanatory and can often overlap. With a fair degree of practice and a backlog of riffs, just about anybody can come up with their own guitar solos.

For a complete answer head over to How do I take a scale and make it into a solo? A lesson on melodic solos, with a step by step guide to constructing a lead part, can be found in the article Leading Questions. Also don’t miss our series of lessons on creating solos, starting with Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1.

How do I know what notes I can use in a solo?

There’s actually a little more to it than simply knowing what key the song is in, but let’s start simply. The easiest way to tell what key a song is in is to look at the sheet music. The number of flats or sharps will pretty much tell you. Chances are, though, that you rarely use sheet music. You’re more likely to have a sheet which has the chord progression. (And to be honset with you, the chord progression is a lot more important than the key but we’ll come back to that…) If you look at the chord progressions of a song, the chances are pretty likely that the song is grouped into patterns of progressions. Usually, but not always, a song will begin and end on the chord of its key. Also, if you listen to the song, there are places where it just sounds like it comes to a conclusion and that will almost always be the same chord.

Knowing what I call the “primary and secondary chords” of any major key can be very useful to you. For instance, if you see that a song has G, A, D, Bm and F#m chords in it, you can make an educated guess that it is in the key of D major. Bm and A major are also possibilities and you’d have to listen to the song to know for sure, but look – you’ve narrowed it down to three of the twenty possibilities! That’s a great start. If you want to know more about how to figure out the primary and secondary chords of any key, read my article The Power of Three.

But you will find out that knowing the key is not always an indicator of what notes to use. This is why knowing some theory will help you out a lot. Take the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil. This song is in the key of E but the chord progression is E, D, A, E. I’m sure you know that the D note is not part of the E major scale. So what do we do? Well, if you know modal scales, an E Dorian scale (E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D, E) will work very well. You may not think that the G would work but it provides what is called a “blue note” that gives some nice tension to the proceedings provided you do not just sit on it for a long period of time. Sometimes it is a lot easier to look at the chord progression and think, “Okay, what key would normally have all these chords” and then work from there.

Another thing that works quite well fairly often is to use the relative minor pentatonic scale. If you know a song is in G major, for example, soloing in the E minor pentatonic scale (E, G, A, B, D) will sound perfectly fine.

I hope that I’ve demonstated here that while knowing the key of a song is very important, it’s also just as important to carefully examine the chord progession when trying to figure out what notes you want to use to solo.

Check out our series of lessons on creating solos, starting with Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1.

Which mode should I use?

D Ionian is the same thing as D major. D Lydian is the same thing as A major but starting, or emphasizing the D. You can start with any note you choose to. But keep in mind that in order to have the feel that your solo is going somewhere along with the chords, the solo should contain elements from the chords. That’s where modes come in. If you are in the key of D Major. The Chord A Major can be found in it. Over that chord I would play A Mixolydian or C# Locrian or E Dorian. These are elements from the chord that are going to be emphasized by the mode being played over it. There are other scales that can be played over this, but this should get you started.

How do I get away from pentatonics when soloing?

This is one of the problems when people learn to only use scales in terms of leads and improvising. Solos can be thought of as songs within songs – with their own melodies and dynamic tension. If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to read Leading Questions and Picture In Dorian Gray.

Also, we’re in the process of putting together quite a few articles on soloing and improvisation that might interest you. What I’d recommend is to start looking outside of your normal style for a while. Check out Gilbert Isbin’s piece on fingerstyle. This shows how different chord voicings can lead to interesting improv ideas: Improvisation for the Fingerstyle guitarist.

Look out for our new articles where we’ll be dissecting other people’s solos and seeing how they tend to come from a combination of scales and chord voicings. We’ll also work on constructing some of our own.

Also, and this is incredibly important, listen to how other instruments solo. Trying to imitate phrasings other than the guitar can also inspire you to new things.

On Guitar Noise you will find more than a month’s worth of articles on this topic on the soloing and improvisation page.

How do I move a scale from one key to another?

What you want to do is to look at your scale positions that you already know and figure out two things: the note on the 6th string and its relationship to your pentatonic scale. Since you are using an Em pentatonic scale (and we know that the notes are E G A B D E, let’s look at what you already know:

Pos 1- 0 open E (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 3 fret G (3rd)
Pos 3- 5 fret A (4th)
Pos 4- 7 fret B (5th)
Pos 5- 10 fret D (7th)

Now since we know that a Dm pentatonic scale is D F G A C D, then we can just look at where these notes fall into place on the sixth string and our patterns will remain the same (unless we have open strings to deal with):

Pos 1- 10th fret D (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 1st or 13th fret F (3rd) – on 1st fret watch for open strings
Pos 3- 3rd fret G (4th)
pos 4- 5th fret A (5th)
Pos 5- 8th fret C (7th)

See how easy it is?

How do I use scales to play guitar fills?

If you listen to good guitarists you’ll note that they often put in a riff or a run of notes when changing from one chord to the next. It’s usually very short and rarely complicated – a hammer on here, a pick off there, maybe a bit of a scale. But for all its simplicity it adds a great deal of flair to your playing. A fill is nothing more than an interesting transition from one chord to another. Often what keeps a good beginner or intermediate from making the next step forward is an inability to incorporate fills into his or her playing.

The simplest fills are best summed up by that wonderful cliché “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” You’re on a C chord (in a song conveniently in the key of C major). The next chord in the song is a G. All you have to do is walk up (or down) the C major scale to G. Pretty easy, isn’t it?

There is a lot more said about this in the article All Down The Line.

If the major scale is comprised of 8 notes where is the 8th note?

This is one of those “quirks” of music. Let me see if I can explain it in one shot.

When you see the major scale written as “1W, 1W, 1H, 1W, 1W, 1W, 1H” you have to realize that you’re NOT counting your starting note! No lie! Whoever came up with this system takes it for granted that you’re going to know your root note and then continue from there. It’s not where is the 8th note, but rather where is the first note. Technically, this should be written as “Root, 1W, 1W, 1H, 1W, 1W, 1W, 1H” That gives you the root on both ends and all should be well with the world.

So in the case of the D major scale, it would be:

(root)
D
then one whole step (1W) to
E then another whole step (1W) to
F# – and not F as you have it
then your half step (1H) to
G
then three whole steps to
A, B and C# (not C)
and then the final half step (1H) to
D

How are Indian notes matched with the western scale?

First, I have to tell you that I am not absolutely positive about this, but I will do my best to check it out to make sure. In most cultures, when a basic scale is sung out in notes it is generally taken to mean that it is the simplest scale possible, which in this case would be the C major scale. I am making this judgment solely upon the similarities I encountered in Greece when a musician would tell me that a song was in “Re” or “La minor.” I have also run into this when playing with some people here in Chicago who play South American (Peruvian, in this case) music and we need to find our common knowledge in terms of keys.

I was able to do some research this morning and, based upon what I’ve learned so far, I think that this line of thinking should be correct. According to what I have learned, there are twelve tones (swara) in the Indian music system (although I think I should say the North Indian, correct?) and when they are arranged from end to end, from Sa to Sa, the flats and sharps do indeed correspond to those on a C major scale.

So, as far as I can tell, ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni’ would be matched with ‘Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti’ which in turn would be matched to the notes ‘C D E F G A B’

What are some scales and chords used in celtic music?

One of the common misconceptions about Celtic music (not to mention all sorts of other genres) is that it contains different chords and/or scales than other music. Now while Celtic music may have a lot of “character traits” for lack of a better term, it still uses the chords and scales with which you are already familiar.

Most traditional music, including Celtic, was old long before the guitar even came around. Hence a lot of the flavor of Celtic guitar style comes from trying to get your guitar to mimic the nuances of the older instruments associated with the Celtic traditions – which would mean a lot of harps, fiddles and pipes. Having a lot of open, ringing strings creates both the sound of the harp and the drone of the pipes. This is why a lot of guitarists who specialize in Celtic music prefer either drop D or DADGAD tuning (which you can find out about in my column On The Tuning Awry), it gives a lot of opportunities for open drones in fifths. Say you’re playing a solo in the key of D. You can use your lower three strings as a drone and play a melodic lead on your high strings at the same time.

A further way to imitate the pipes is to use a lot of “trilling” effects – such as hammer-ons and pull-offs. If you listen to Celtic music (and listening to any traditional music is the best way to come up with ideas) there is a lilting quality to it. Melodies flit about in a very ornate style. You cannot add too many trills. Another cool technique is to use vibrato on various notes. Not typical guitar vibrato (where you slide your finger back and forth along the string) but rather hard vibrato where you move your finger PERPENDICULAR to the string. This will cause your melodies to occasionally go slightly sharp or flat, but this again gives the impression of the instruments not being perfect. Well placed bends can also do this.

For even more on playing celtic style music check out the article A Celtic Air and a whole series of celtic song arrangements by Doug Sparling on the celtic music page.

Scales and Soloing FAQ was written by Guitar Noise Staff for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Hi David,

I’ve read a few of your articles about constructing solos, and I appreciate the advice (thanks!). I would rate myself as an intermediate guitarist and am trying to branch out into building better solo skills. I have a fair grasp of scales and some modes of play. But I have a few questions on building solos:

It seems matching scales to a key doesn’t always work! For example, I’ve found simply using a G Major Pentatonic scale over a G-Major song doesn’t always sound right. Why doesn’t that always work? What would you say to help me build a better solo pattern?

Thanks for the advice,

As I worked on responding to this email, it seemed to make more and more sense to answer it in the way I do in private lessons, which is through listening and participation. And that idea turned into an article, an incredibly dense and cumbersome article by the way, which then turned into this, the first of a series of shorter lessons that will (hopefully) walk everyone through the steps of moving from knowing one’s scales to applying that knowledge to playing solos.

This series of lessons is going to be a little different than the others here at Guitar Noise (at least the others up to this point) in that you, the reader, are going to need to do a lot of listening and also quite a bit of your own experimentation. Soloing, as with many other aspects of music, is highly personal. There’s not so much a “right” or “wrong” as there is convention. And taste and style, not to mention achieving the desired musical effect, should trump convention.

But before you take those statements as a free pass to playing whatever you want to, take a moment and think. Gaining the ability to listen and the ability to take what’s in your mind and put it out through your fingers into the guitar are going to take quite a bit of practice. The key thing is that you don’t have to start totally from scratch. The more you can tell yourself what you’re trying to achieve, the easier it tends to be to achieve it.

So we do need to be able to tell, or at least tell ourselves, something about what we hear and what we want to hear. And that’s where this lesson starts us out. We’re going to listen to the difference between two scales – the major scale and the major pentatonic scale – and to start to appreciate what each scale has to offer.

If you’ve not done so already, you may find it helpful to read an old Guitar Noise Guitar Column entitled Scaling the Heights, as a lot of the basic information we’ll be using is covered there. It also will not hurt you to know how chords are formed, so you might also want to brush up on that with a quick read of The Power of Three. All right, then?

For this lesson, we’re going to use a very basic (and very standard) chord progression, the I, vi, IV, V progression that you can hear in tons of songs (Stand By Me or Last Kiss probably being ones known to many of you). We’ll be playing this in the key of C major, so that means that the chords will be C, Am, F and G.

Since we know the key of the song (C major), many of you may already be ready to play – either using the C major scale or the C major pentatonic scale. But let’s get everyone else up to speed first. The notes of the C major scale are:

Many guitarists automatic abandon the major scale, though, for the basic reason that pentatonic scales are easier to play. In most positions, you rarely need more than a stretch of three frets to play them. And the patterns of the pentatonic scale, especially the “Root 6″ pattern (where the root note is on the low E (sixth) string), are fairly easy to remember.

To make the major pentatonic scale, we take the notes at the Root (“I”), second, third, fifth and sixth positions, so the C major pentatonic scale would consist of C, D, E, G and A.

Looking through Scaling The Heights, we learn that we can play the major pentatonic in the following pattern:

Translating this pattern into notation / guitar tablature, it will look like this:

So let’s take this pattern and see what we can come up with when we play along with the chord progression of C, Am, F and G. Here’s something I did on a quick take:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Two things I want to point out – first, the object here is not to copy what I did. It’s to simply play around and to get used to the position of the scale, not to mention to get used to how the pentatonic scale sounds as a tool for soloing.

And that brings us to the second point – for the sake of this exercise, I’m not worrying about doing anything fancy. There may be a bit of a slide here and there, but no bends, no double stops, nothing remotely requiring any type of technique other than finding the notes of the scale. That’s kind of why it sounds like someone practicing a scale as opposed to a “solo.” Hopefully, not totally so! This is an issue we’ll address in a later lesson in this series.

For now, though, let’s move on to getting our ears and heads working a little more. I can’t say how true this is for all of you, but I find the sound of the C major pentatonic lead a little, shall we say, “lacking.” It’s not that it doesn’t sound okay; rather it just doesn’t seem to live up to its potential.

And when we make a closer examination of what’s going on, it’s not all that hard to see why. Let’s take a look at the notes that make up each chord of the progression, shall we?

Remembering that the C pentatonic scale consists of the notes C, D, E, G and A, we see that, when we’re playing along with the C and Am chords, every note of the chord is accounted for in the pentatonic scale. But when we play the F and G chords, we’re missing a note in each. There’s no F in the C major pentatonic scale, so when we play along with the F chord, there’s no root note (F) to nail the chord down and give it a nice foundation. And when we play the G chord, we’re missing the B note, which determines whether the G chord is major or minor. Plus, the B note is the “leading tone” of the C major scale – the note that pulls our ears to the home tonality of C.

In other words, the notes that we’ve dropped from the C major scale to make the C major pentatonic (F and B) are kind of important in this chord progression. So let’s add them back and see what happens when we try soloing in the C major scale. First off, let’s look at the pattern:

And now let’s translate that into notation and tablature:

And, after practicing the pattern a little to get it into our fingers, let’s play along with the chord progression again. Just for the sake of being dramatic, I’d tried to stress the F and B notes when I played this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, I can’t stress enough that this is a matter of personal taste. To my ears, using the entire C major scale sounds a lot more interesting. There are more opportunities to create interesting uses of dissonance (more on that in upcoming lessons!), not to mention using the B note to create chord variations – played over the C you get Cmaj7 and played over the Am you get Am(add9).

Try thinking about it this way: your solo is a painting and your scale is a pallet of colors. In this lesson, we’ve done two paintings, one using five colors (the C major pentatonic scale) and one using seven colors (the C major scale). Both certainly work, but if I were to ask you which scale is the “right” one to use, what would you say? It really depends on what you’re trying to paint.

So the first lesson we need to learn is this – it’s one thing to know our scales; it’s another matter entirely to have an awareness of what they can do. Or to know which one to pick or how to even determine how to know which one to pick. Part of this can be learned – convention dictates that some things just go together well. But part of it is also a matter of taking the time to listen and to experiment with what you know. Not to mention to continue to learn new things in order to have more with which to experiment.

So, to help you get going on this, here’s an “extended version” of our chord progression:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download this MP3 file to your computer and use it as a backing track while you play around with both the C major and the C major pentatonic scales. Feel free to noodle aimlessly at first, but once you’re comfortable, try to listen seriously to yourself (recording yourself isn’t a bad idea!) and to how you may gravitate towards one of these two scales more than the other.

Also, take the time to get very comfortable with both of these scales! We’ll be using them as examples in the next upcoming lessons in this series, so having them in your fingers can only be a good thing! Extra credit if you know the note names in position!

And, as always, please feel free to write me with any questions. Either leave me a message at the forum page (you can “Instant Message” me if you’re a member) or mail me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

• One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2
• The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3
• Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4
• Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5
• Targeting in on a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6
• Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7
• Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8
• Practice With Purpose – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 9

Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Many of the exercises in this chapter ask the player to read a melody in a particular position using a “closed” left-hand fingering. That just means that we are not going to be using any open strings. If we avoid open strings, the patterns become as movable as any simple bar chord. This approach will give you more options when playing and be the “key” to unlocking the mysteries of the higher frets.

The Five Patterns

I believe that the easiest way to master the higher positions is through the memorization of five scale patterns. These patterns cover the fretboard in a given key, showing you very clearly where all of the “in” notes are. They can then be transposed to other keys by moving them up or down the neck without any change to your fingering. Here are the five patterns in the key of C major:

Pattern 1 (Frets 12-15) (numbers in circles indicate which string to play note on – (6) is low E, (5) is A, etc.; numbers beside the note indicate which finger to use to fret the note – 1 is index finger, 2 is middle finger, etc.,)

Pattern 2 (Frets 2-5)

Pattern 3 (Frets 5-8)

Pattern 4 (Frets 7-10)

Pattern 5 (Frets 8-13)

Second and Third Position
Try reading the following melody, which falls nicely into the second and third positions with Pattern Two in C major. Remember that the second string shifts into third position so that we can reach the F on the sixth fret with the fourth finger. If you would like to read it once in open position in order to familiarize yourself with the sound of the melody its not a bad idea.

Exercise 1

Transposition
Now let’s try reading the same line in a different key without changing positions. We’ll try G major for now because it shares many of the same notes with C major. What pattern would you use for second position in G major? If you said pattern four you would be right. I put the lower leading tone (F#) and the high A in parenthesis in order to emphasis the tonic G.

Here is the melody from Exercise 1, which we read in C, now transposed to G. Use pattern four as the guide for the frets.

Exercise 2

Now let’s give D major a try. Use Pattern One in to play this next exercise in second position.

Exercise 3

Any diatonic (in a key) piece of music may be approached in this way. Simply figure out the key, the position or positions in which most of the notes fall, and then apply the appropriate pattern. This pattern-oriented system will enable you to easily find your way around in any key or mode anywhere on the fretboard.

Vibrato

Playing melodic passages without using lots of open strings can also give you a few more options musically. For example, you can add vibrato to a closed note, but not an open string. A “classical” vibrato is created through the rhythmic raising and lowering of a pitch by pulling and pushing the string horizontally to the fretboard. A steel-string guitarist usually creates vibrato by bending sharp, pulling the string either up or down, and then relaxing back to pitch. I have always believed that the best way to get the feel of a natural vibrato is by listening to a really good cellist or violinist. There is also much to be learned from a good singer.

One of the aspects of vibrato technique that needs attention is the speed at which the note vibrates. A good rule of thumb is to use a slower vibrato for low notes and a faster vibrato for high notes. Just imagine a soprano singing a high C with a slow vibrato or a baritone using a fast one. The soprano would sound like she has had a bit too much to drink and the baritone would sound like he was having an anxiety attack.

Fourth and Fifth Positions
Just like before, find the key and then a pattern that fits the general area of the neck that most of the notes fall. For this next example in A minor, play in the fifth position using pattern number three (C major/A minor). Don’t forget to raise the G to G# in the fifth measure.

Exercise 4

Here is the same melody that we read earlier (Exercise 3) in D major (second position) transposed now to E major. Simply move Pattern One up to fourth position for this one.

Exercise 5

For this next melody in A major/fourth position you use Pattern Four.

Exercise 6

Improvisation
The pattern-oriented approach is not only useful for reading music; it is also extremely helpful when improvising. Using a learned scale pattern to improvise is not anything new to most players; however, there are some exercises that can make us even more comfortable in the higher positions. It’s a fact that many guitar players will learn only one or two patterns and use them almost exclusively. The problem with that is that it limits you to one spot on the neck for all of your solos. With five different patterns you will be free to move anywhere in the key all over the neck. Practice connecting the patterns so you can easily jump from one to another without any trouble.

Practice Challenge No. 1: Try to play scales through the Circle of Fifths without shifting more than one or two frets away from where you start. For example if you decide to try this in second position you would go through the following patterns:

• C major/Pattern Two
• G major/Pattern Four
• D major/Pattern One
• A major/Pattern Three
• E major/Pattern Five
• B major/Pattern Two
• F# major/Pattern Four
• C# major/Pattern One etc…

Practice Challenge No. 2: Play every position for a given key by shifting from one pattern to the next while ascending and then descending the fretboard. For instance, if you start with an ascending C major scale in second position (Pattern Two) shift up into Pattern Three on the first string and then descend. When you reach the bottom of the Third Pattern in fifth position, shift to Pattern Four in seventh position and ascend. Continue like this until you complete the fretboard and then try it in a different key.

Final Thoughts

While this article has focused mainly on using the patterns for major and the relative minor, they can also be used for Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Locrian. You don’t even need to learn different patterns, simply recognize the new tonic. In other words, if you’re thinking about a pattern in major, focus on the second degree of the scale and make it the new “home base”. Now you’re playing a Dorian pattern. It’s just that easy!

A word of caution: do not think only in patterns while ignoring individual note names. Too many guitarists play patterns without any idea which notes they are fingering. What you really need to do is practice scales slow enough that you can say the names of the notes to yourself as you go. After all, learning the names of the notes was the whole point.

About the Author

Dr. Scott Morris, DMA, is the Coordinator of Guitar Studies at California State University in Dominguez Hills, California.

Mastering the Higher Positions was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise