Tip: Soloing With Melodic Minor Scale II
We’re exploring the melodic minor scale for soloing over dominant 7 chords. This is the third part in a series called “Scales and Soloing.”
Are scales important for playing guitar? You bet! They are the cornerstone of a few things you absolutely need to know: such as chords and solos. But you don’t have to be a music theory expert to get this stuff. Start here with the beginner lessons and work your way up – we’ll teach you everything you need to know about scales and modes.
We’re exploring the melodic minor scale for soloing over dominant 7 chords. This is the third part in a series called “Scales and Soloing.”
What exactly is a melodic minor scale? It’s something that makes solos sound interesting and different; but not so different to make them sound wrong.
So far in this series we’ve been finding scales to play over major chords. Now we’re going to work out some scales to play over dominant chords.
Is the C major pentatonic the only scale you can use over a progression in C major? Thankfully, no. We have many choices.
Let’s get into a topic that gets a lot of guitarists excited, and some maybe a little frustrated: scales to use for soloing.
Guitarists tend to be somewhat comfortable with note names in open position, but become disoriented and frustrated when they attempt to move up the neck. Dr. Morris, Coordinator of Guitar Studies at California State University presents five scale patterns, which, when combined with a basic knowledge of the Circle of Fifths, will allow you to play in any key over the entire neck of the guitar.
Here’s Graham’s take on using a mathematical approach to learning the fretboard. And while he’ll be the first to say that this is not a replacement for theory and it won’t teach you the names of notes in scales or chords, but it does offer you a way of using theory without too much thought.
Tom Serb explores three different ways that the guitarist can incorporate altered or exotic scales into his or her playing and gives us examples using both the Zangula and Rwanda scales. This article is a gift for those of you looking to expand your soloing vocabulary.