LESSONS THEORY
Pentatonic Substitutions, Part 1
Learn some new and musically colorful applications of a familiar scale.
BY TOM KOLB
John Mayer
JOBY SESSIONS (MAYER); JACK VARTOOGIAN/GETTY IMAGES (DUPREE)
Cornell Dupree
DID YOU KNOW that every major and natural minor scale contains within its structure six different pentatonic scales — three major and three minor? Once understood and utilized, this multipentatonic awareness can open up the fretboard in many convenient and inventive ways. For starters, it can help you break out of the uninspiring solitary-position-playing rut, sending your fingers to places on the fretboard you never thought they could go. It can also help you create unusual-sounding, “off the beaten path” phrases and easily craft melodic and rhythmic motifs. It can even open the floodgates for “inside/ outside” passages.
In this two-part lesson, I’ll explain and demonstrate how this can be done in appealing ways that will hopefully inspire you to take the musical ball and run with it in new and interesting directions. This first installment will cover the foundation of the overlapping interrelationships between pentatonic scales and major and natural minor scales, and include examples in the styles of various players. Next month, in Part 2, we’ll look at some cool ways that pentatonic licks can be used to create colorful modal implications.
PENTATONIC PATTERNS
We’ll begin by surveying the fretboard patterns that will be used in this lesson. Examples 1a-e illustrate the five minor pentatonic “box” patterns, or shapes, each having two notes per string. The circled notes are the roots, or tonics.