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I've always wanted to learn to improvise as I considered the art of improvisation to be the ultimate discipline of masters. However, path to perfection is crooked and full of traps and it took me some time to really understand the basic principles as these (and sometimes even the online lessons explaining them) can often be quite confusing. I will try to connect all the knowledge I have acquired over the time, to help anyone with the same ambition I had. I’m not a great improviser and my skills are lacking in many ways but I think that this can be to advantage of this lesson as I'm very familiar with problems of “beginning” guitarists-improvisers since I was on this level for quite a long time. After all, an old joke says that you can teach music if you are at least two lessons ahead of your student. Anyway, let's skip to the point. We will begin at the same place as any other lesson would - pentatonic scales. Pentatonic scale is a scale consisting of five notes (penta=five). Two most basic ones are major and minor pentatonic. They are usually the first step of beginning guitarists as they have many pros - they are quite easy to learn (which I'll be dealing with in part III) and first of all: if played from the right note, they don’t sound off-key and thus can be played at any time during a song. However, limiting yourself to 5 notes will greatly decrease your ability to solo interestingly. But we will deal with that later on. For now, just try to memorize these basic shapes and play around with them. YouTube is full of backing tracks and I highly recommend you choose one of them and spend some time with it. Just focus on choosing the right shape (usually it’s the minor one) and correct root note (it’s usually written in video description). Trivia no. 1: Saying that pentatonics are dull and boring is certainly not right. They are used in many kinds of music, including classical. Listen to "|---------------5(root)-7--||-------------5-7----------||----------4-6-------------||--------4-7(root)---------||-----4—7------------------||--5(root)-7---------------|We will come back to this in part III. Now we need to enrich this scale so that it gives you more options. * If you don’t understand this notation, I recommend following lesson. Simply put, you can think about it as variables in math that allow you to talk in all keys at the same time. If you say that the scale or chord consists of 1, 4, b5, then everybody knows right away that in C they would use C, F, Gb; in G G, C, Db and so on. Pentatonic scales, consisting of 5 notes while standard scales contain 7, offer some ways to enhancement. Their sound can be enriched by adding notes outside of these five that sound well or particularly interesting. One of those is augmented fourth (#4) or flattened fifth (b5). These names come from music theory and tell you, that to get these notes you need to either flatten the fifth or augment the fourth by a semitone (the same thing - consider C major scale - C (1) – D (2) – E (3) – F (4) – G (5) – A (6) – B (7) – by flattening the fifth you get Gb, by augmenting the fourth you come to F#, those two notes are the same, they are said to be enharmonically equivalent), but players and composers have come up with some other names – in blues and jazz it’s often called the blue note because of its emotional qualities and in Medieval Ages, this interval was thought to have come from the devil himself, so they dubbed it "diabolus in musica." Another name is tritone because it consists of three whole steps. (C – D (first whole step), D – E (second), E - F# (third)) Enough of the history though and let’s talk about its practical use. Even though the blue note is heavily dissonant and harmonically extremely unstable, by careful approach we can turn this to our advantage, because disharmony is very useful when expressing emotions. You have surely heard some blues songs before (if not quickly google some B. B. King or Eric Clapton stuff). Have you ever noticed that all of these have something in common? Yes, it’s the blue note. They use it to create tension. And so can you. I will now provide you with a pattern of minor pentatonic with added blue note. You might have seen it before - its name is Blues scale. (To be clear, this interval is very common in every genre, it’s not blues specific at all) A Blues scale
|---------------5(root)-8---||-------------5-8-----------||----------5-7-8------------||--------5-7(root)----------||-----5—6-7-----------------||--5(root)-8----------------|Notice the differences and try to incorporate this extremely useful interval into your playing. Try bending into it, try bending out of it, try to use it harmonically, it’s your choice. After getting the sound of the blue note under your skin, try to focus on it while listening to solos of your favourite guitarists. It is that little disharmonic edge that makes them sound so well. In the next part, we will focus on finally using the whole neck using simple tricks and methods. Trivia no. 2: Blue note is used in popular music a lot. One example would be “The Inner Light” by Beatles but we could name loads of them. I’ve already mentioned the diabolical properties of this interval so it won’t surprise you, that when you listen to Black Sabbath song by Black Sabbath from album Black Sabbath, you’ll hear tritone right in the first riff. Guitar is a very visual instrument and there are some ways for us to use this to our advantage. I offer you three of them: a) Octaves This one is very simple. Let’s say you’ve just learned the A pentatonic scale in its basic position (5th fret). You can now move 12 frets higher and use the same pattern. b) Minor x Major relationship After you learn the minor pentatonic scale in its second position you will notice that the pattern is similar to that of the major version. It’s not by chance – they are both tied together by a certain relationship. I’ll let you discover that by yourselves as for our purposes, it will suffice to say that e. g. A minor pentatonic pattern from 5th fret is the same as C major pentatonic from 8th (i. e. from its root). Now you do not need to learn new positions for both the minor and the major pentatonic scales, you just need to know them for one of those if you know how to work this accordingly. Bear in mind however, that now the functions of the notes have changed. You will no longer find the root (A in this example) on the root position of the major pattern as there is now a C. A minor pentatonic played from C (aka C major pentatonic pattern)
|---------------8-10--------||-------------8-10(root)----||----------7-9--------------||--------7(root)-10---------||-----7—10------------------||--8-10---------------------|c) “4 next to 2” This "rule" I have kind of come up by myself. I have noticed that in the vicinty of the basic minor position when we have the big stretch, it is USUALLY followed by a smaller one. Let me show you what I mean: A pentatonic
|3-(short)-5-(long)-8-(short)-10||3-(short)-5-(long)-8-(short)-10||3-(long)-5-(short)-7-(SHORT)--9||3-(long)-5(short)-7-(long)---10||3-(SHORT)-5-(short)-7-(long)-10||3-(short)-5-(long)-8-(short)-10|...and voila, you can now play in 6 different positions without much work. Discovering this made my working with these scales a lot easier. I hope it has been explained clearly as I believe it can have the same effect on anyone. * * *This will be enough for today. Next time we will dive into the real deal and take look at colouring your newly learned pentatonics, we will talk about sensible use of those famous modes, we will explore chromaticism and many other more advanced concepts. It will end with an article attempting to connect this theoretical knowledge into something that works and sounds well. For now, practice what we have learned and take care.
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