New Ways to use Pentatonic Scales

Firstly if you're a guitar player who uses the minor pentatonic scale almost exclusively the first thing you need to do is break that habit. Go through my Soloing Exercises And focus on chord tones, once that habit is broken; read on.

A minor pentatonic scale is the natural minor scale, or Aeolian Mode without the sixth or the second.

A major pentatonic scale is the major scale without the fourth or the seventh.

I once heard someone with his BA in music claim that pentatonic scales are the invention of the devil, and for a long time I agreed, however if you know how to work them they can produce some really cool sounds. To understand how these ideas will work you will need to understand Thirteenth Chords so read my article if you don't know what they are.

We're going to start by using a minor pentatonic scale over the Amin7 chord.

Amin7:           A  C     E  G
Amin pentatonic: A  C  D  E  G

Notice there's only a one know difference between the scale and the arpeggio, that note is actually the 4th, or 11th of the chord, so by playing the A minor pentatonic scale over the Amin7 chord we are actually implying a Amin11 chord. Now let's try something else, let's build a minor pentatonic scale off the ninth of the chord.

Amin7:            A    C  E       G
Bmin Pentatonic:  A  B    E  D F#

A little more difference here, the root and the fifth are still there, but we're also adding B (the ninth), D (the 11th) and F# (the 13th.) So we're actually implying a Amin13 chord here, omitting the third and the seventh.

We can also build of the fifth of the chord, giving us the root, fifth, minor seventh, ninth and eleventh, again implying an Amin11 chord, with an omitted third.

Major Pentatonic scales work the same way with maj7 chords.

Building off the root gives you: root, third, fifth, ninth, thirteenth.

Building off the fifth gives you: third, fifth, seventh, ninth, thirteenth

Building off the ninth gives you: third, seventh, ninth, sharp eleventh, thirteenth

Now the Application:

Let's use Black Orpheus as an example, the first line goes as follows:

Am7      |Bm7b5  E7  |Am7      |Bm7b5  E7  |

If we use the C#minor/E major (same notes) pentatonic scale over the second and forth measures, it will work nicely, (C# is the ninth of B minor) and the major pentatonic can be built off the root of a dominant seven chord easily (it contains no seventh).

However for the first and third measures we have a couple options, the most obvious being to change scales, perhaps move a whole tone down and build off the ninth, or move it somewhere else: however let's try keeping it right where it is:

E – The fifth of A
F# - the thirteenth of A
G# - the major seventh of A
B – the ninth of A
C# - the Major third of A

So the only two notes not within the Amin13 chord are the G# and the C#, now if you know this tune well enough, you can easily change the Am7 into a Am/maj7 (1. b3, 5, 7) since the G is never played over the Amin7 chord, provided you let the rest of the band know you're doing this you're golden. However that leaves us with the C# this isn't a particularly great sounding note over the chord, however it really isn't that horrible, and can easily be used provided you resolve in the a nearby strong note, (the fifth is probably best in most situations here.)