Almost every rock guitarist knows his minor pentatonic scales inside and out, as they are the backbone of rock and blues soloing, song structures and chord progressions. This month, I’d like to...
Almost every rock guitarist knows his minor pentatonic scales inside and out, as they are the backbone of rock and blues soloing, song structures and chord progressions. This month, I’d like to demonstrate some simple ways to twist standard pentatonic licks to create unusual “outside” sounds.
In FIGURE 1, I play a sequence of 16th notes, all derived from A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) and based on a progression of thirds and fourths, moving from lower to higher strings in two-string pairs. This is a basic pattern that many of you may already know. For many of the note pairs I barre a finger across two adjacent strings at the same fret.
I like to hybrid pick this pattern, using my middle finger to pluck the higher note of each pair. The phrase ends with a whole-step bend up to the A root note, which I adorn with some soulful finger vibrato.
This is a cool lick as is, but let’s tweak it a bit by shifting the notes up a half step every other beat, temporarily moving out of key. As shown in FIGURE 2, beats one and three in bar 1 and beat one in bar 2 are identical to FIGURE 1. The “twist” is on beats two and four of bar 1, wherein I shift the notes up one fret and instead play them in Bb minor pentatonic (Bb Db Eb F Ab). This simple alteration pulls the lick out of the familiar and into an unexpected and new harmonic territory, creating an exciting dissonance and feeling of tension and release.
Let’s now apply the concept to other minor pentatonic patterns. In FIGURE 3, I