Spicing Up The Pentatonic

The Minor Pentatonic scale… known and loved by all! An essential sound in rock history, and is an instrumental part in the learning process for many guitarists. But do those five beautiful intervals offer guitarists pentatonic perfection? If you were like me, it was a fantastic scale to start my journey into improvisation and lead playing, but it soon felt like I was playing the same licks over, and over, and over again… So, in this quick lesson, I'm going to show you how to 'fill in' the pentatonic shape with various intervals to create new scales and completely open up your lead playing!

Minor Pentatonic Scale

The minor pentatonic scale is comprised of the following sequence of intervals - 1, b3, 4, 5 and b7. We're using A minor for this lesson, as it has no accidentals (sharps or flats). Please note that if you've just stopped to scratch your head and think - '… but you've just mentioned that the scale has a b3 and b7 in it?! - we're referring to the quality of the interval, and it doesn't mean the actual note is flat. To put this into context, the notes in A major would be A, B, C#, D, E, F# and G#. Whereas, in A minor, we have A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. So, to get from A major to A minor, we need to flatten the 3rd, 6th and 7th degree.

Check out the tabs for the lick below - we'll be using this as a framework to see how we can incorporate new scales into our playing with ease. If you want to really get a sense of what this sounds like, try recording a loop of the following powerchords - A, F, G, and E.

Blues Scale

I'm sure some of you might have seen this one coming… the first way to add some flavour and tension into your playing is by adding the blue note to your pentatonic scale. The blue note is a fun name for the b5 interval, or in the context of A minor, it would be Eb. This interval exists between the 4th and 5th degree. Some of you may also know this interval as the tritone, as it is 3 whole tones away from the 1st degree of the scale.

Anyways, back to the lesson! To use this note most effectively, we need to understand that it holds a lot of tension, and therefore is usually not a note that we want to spend too much time on. Try using it as a passing note to add flavour, and be amazed how quickly it can transform your phrasing! Refer to the fretboard diagram below to see where this note can be found. I've included a tab for a lick that includes the b5 for you to try as well. I would also take this as an opportunity to practice visualising where the 5th degree is on your fretboard, as you can always slide or bend from the b5 to the 5th to inject some guitarry goodness!

Natural Minor Scale

Though the blues note is a fantastic way to inject a burst of tension, it can quickly start to sound a bit predictable if over used. The natural minor scale (commonly known as the minor scale, but there's a reason for the specific name, stay tuned…) is a great way to introduce two new notes to explore! To create this scale, we need to add the 2nd (B), and b6 (F) degrees to our existing pentatonic shape.

Using the natural minor scale is a fantastic way to practice your phrasing and target notes, as we have introduced the remaining two notes that build the harmony for the underlying chords. Target notes are essential in having control over the build-up and resolution of tension. It is often hard to resist resolving to the root note of the overarching scale, which leads to repetitive phrasing. Targeting notes that create the underlying chords of the harmony can still get the sense of resolution, but offer a more interesting contour to your melodies!

Below is the tab for a lick using the natural minor scale. Let's take a closer look at the second bar of the phrase. The chord under the lead is an F power-chord, which is built using the F, and C (1st and 5th degree of F). We can now fully resolve any tension in our melody as we have access to F, the root note of the underlying chord. As mentioned above, we don't always want to resolve to the root - practice targeting the 3rd and 5th of each chord to target different 'levels' of resolution.

With that said, tension and the resolution thereof is what creates interesting music. If we always played notes from the underlying harmony, we would simply be playing arpeggios and music would become entirely predictable. Take a closer look at the end of the second bar - the phrase ends on a G over the F powerchord. G is not part of the F major triad, instead, it's the 2nd (or 9th degree). As the powerchord is lacking the 3rd degree, this G is acting as a suspended 2nd over this bar. The underlying chord for the next bar is a G powerchord, therefore, the note in the melody resolves to the root and releases the tension.

Harmonic Minor Scale

Have I mentioned the word 'tension' enough yet? I don't think so, because we're about to dive into our next scale - the harmonic minor! The harmonic minor scale shares six out of seven notes with the natural minor scale we just looked at, with the one difference of changing the minor 7 degree (G) to a major 7 degree (G#).

Changing just that one note comes with quite a few harmonic implications, but we can discuss that in detail in another lesson… Let's focus on how to use it in your lead playing! Using the major 7 degree can be similar to using the b5 degree from the blues scale - it's there to add colour, and we don't want to overuse it. The lick tabbed out below uses G# as a passing note - the tension it creates sounds 'darker' to me than the natural minor to me, and creates a sense of 'desperation' in the melodic language.

Another chord it works beautifully over is the E powerchord (bar 4). This is because changing the G to the G# over the E powerchord creates an E major by introducing the major third to the chord. This creates the extremely grand sounding cadence of a major 5 chord to the minor 1 chord (V-i). Feel free to use the major 7 degree over any of the other chords as well, but keep in mind to use it more as a passing note to avoid some rather unsavoury clashes.

Use them all!

All of these new scales are great and have hopefully already helped inspired some new licks in your lead playing - but we don't necessarily want to pigeonhole ourselves into playing one scale at a time. I strongly believe that beautiful music always has a story to tell, and the melody is often our strongest tool to do so. Therefore, I encourage you to try using all of the scales (don't forget the pentatonic!) in the context of one track to give yourselves as many story-telling tools (notes) as possible! Please refer back to the sections in this lesson for guidance, and don't expect to immediately feel comfortable with the new notes. Give yourself time to get a feel of where they belong over the harmony and in your musical story.