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144 Part III: Beyond the Basics: Playing Like a Pro Why the pentatonic is the perfect scale
The pentatonic scale is probably the greatest thing to happen to the blues
since the Mississippi Delta. The scale was born to play the blues. When using
this scale, it’s virtually impossible to hit a wrong note — meaning all the
notes sound good when played over any chord in the key, producing no
unpleasant clashes (musically discordant results), no matter what combinations
you dream up. It works in a blues progression. It works in a minor key. It
works over a country-rock progression. The pentatonic scale is easy to memorize
and provides you infinite material for melodic expression. It’s as close
to plug and play or play by the numbers that blues guitarists have.
Ever wonder why wind chimes always clang in perfectly pleasing tunes?
They’re often tuned to a pentatonic scale; no matter what random combination
of sounds the wind can whip up by pushing the chimes’ bells or tines
into each other, the results are pleasing.
By a stroke of very good luck (and the blues needs all the good luck it can
get!), the minor version of the pentatonic scale — see the next section — fits
perfectly over blues progressions; provides some authentic-sounding and
expressive, melodic material; and gives blues guitarists an instant solution
for playing all the right notes! Wouldn’t you have liked to have the pentatonic
scale when you had to play your second-grade piano recital in front of all
those kids in the auditorium? Or how about a pentatonic scale for talking
with your boss so that you never hit a wrong note with him? Real-life conversations
may not have a pentatonic scale, but the blues does, and in the following
sections, I show you what it is and how to use it.
TEAM LinG
The two sides of the pentatonic scale
Guitarists use two kinds of pentatonic scales: major and minor. Both use identical
fingering and notes, but the keys are referred to by different names. For
example, the scale in the following section is called E minor pentatonic. But
it’s also G major pentatonic and can be used in non-blues progressions in G
major (like those used for country and country-rock music). Because blues
primarily uses the minor-pentatonic version, the focus here is on the minorpentatonic
keys and applications.
Check out Table 8-1 for a comparison of the notes in the major and minor
pentatonic scales.