Guitar Noise » turning scales into solos

Taking Care of Choices – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 8

David Hodge — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:34:42 +0000

First, an apology – even though I mentioned (last time out) that we’d cover two topics in this particular installment of our “Turning Scales into Solos” series, I’d like to put one on hold for a (very) short time. We’ll look at the inherent trap that almost all of us fall into simply by practicing scales in “Part 9,” which should go online sometime in mid-June.

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

Sustaining Interest in a Target – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 7

David Hodge — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:14:55 +0000

With your indulgence, I’d like to begin this next lesson by repeating a few pieces of information from some of our other lessons in this “Turning Scales into Solos” series. First, let’s look at this idea from our second lesson (One Note at a Time):

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?

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Targeting a Mode – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 6

David Hodge — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:37:34 +0000

If there are two main points that you have, hopefully, gotten thus far in each of our “Turning Scales into Solos” series of lessons, it’s that, first and foremost, a solo should be determined by the song, by its mood, feel and chord progression. The second idea is that a single scale is rarely the only solution to finding a way to solo over a chord progression.

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”)

Not sure that I’m really okay with that one…

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?

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Color Me Blue – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 5

David Hodge — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:57:07 +0000

Our fourth installment of “Turning Scales into Solos” will, kind of by its very nature, be a shorter lesson than normal. But just because it’s short in length it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing here to learn. Quite the contrary! Before we can (temporarily) walk away from the blues, there’s one more very important scale to discuss. Appropriately, it’s called the blues scale.

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

Combining The Major Scale With The Minor Pentatonic – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 4

David Hodge — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:00:18 +0000

Last time out, in The Major and the Minor, we listened to the tonal qualities of both the major and the minor pentatonic scales when used for soloing over a typical blues progression. Both had their merits. The major pentatonic was good at defining the major tonality while the minor pentatonic added flavor by its use of “blue notes.” And for those of you who may have forgotten about blue notes (or simply didn’t read the last lesson), here’s a quick recap, 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.

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

The Major and the Minor – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 3

David Hodge — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:22:50 +0000

Welcome to the third installment of “Turning Scales into Solos!” I hope you’ve been both practicing the exercises from our first two lessons as well as spending time listening to solos in music. And I guess this is as good a place as any to note that you should listen to any solo, whether it’s played by a guitar or an ocarina. Listening to other instruments solo is a great way to develop your ear for phrasing, as well as to pick up ideas that may eventually find their way into your fingers as they fly over the frets.

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!

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

One Note At A Time – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 2

David Hodge — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:55:29 +0000

So, how did you learn to swim? Did you take it step by step – getting comfortable in the water, maybe learning to float and then dogpaddle and then finally get some real arm and leg motion going – or did you jump (or get thrown) into the deep end and figure that you’d better learn really fast. Not to mention soon!

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.

Until next time…

Peace

Also in this Series

Choosing Colors – Turning Scales into Solos – Part 1

David Hodge — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 12:26:43 +0000

I got this email a short while back:

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!

Until next time…

Peace