Guitar Scales : Use of The Pentatonic Minor Scale to Solo Over The Common Chords
May 6, 2011Guitar Soloing over specific chords is straightforward when you know how to use the minor pentatonic scale. Spice up your solos easily with these basic tips on how to apply this easy five note scale. The minor pentatonic scale is what many guitar players focus on when studying to solo. The point here is, they don’t figure out how to apply the scale to to its full capabilities. In this article, I’ll explain to you an easy way make use of the minor pentatonic scale to solo over the most common guitar chords , these are Major, Minor and dominant 7th chords.
Guitar Soloing Over Major Chords. All major chords and guitar scales come with their associated relative minors.The quick way to find the relative minor of any major chord or scale is to simply go downward 3 frets on the guitar or three half steps. To illustrate: when soloing over a G major chord, go down 3 frets on the guitar and start using the e minor pentatonic scale. Utilize this process with any major chord and you can’t go wrong.
Guitar Soloing over the Minor Chords. This is dead easy, just use the exact same min pent scale as the minor chord in which you are playing over. For example use the E min pent scale on top of the E minor guitar chord, the F min pent scale over the F min guitar chord and so on.
Soloing Over Dominant 7 chords. You’ve got a few possibilities here. But ordinarily, you would use the relative min pentatonic, or the min pentatonic a tone directly below the relative minor of the 7 chord. Both work and both will give unique sounds. Play around with both and decide which ends up sounding best for the lead line or solo you’re playing.
Soloing using a ‘KEY” Perspective. If we take the key of G major as an example, we commonly use these three major chords : G, D and C. We already know that the relative minor of G is E minor, so we simply apply the E minor pent scale in this particular key. If the piece is in E minor or another minor key, simply employ the same or corresponding min pent scale to solo with. The most common chords with this key are the minor chords E, A and B.
The idea of implementing pentatonics over a assortment of guitar chords generally is a terrific skill to posess. Your solos should sound very professional because the notes follow the chord changes. Hopefully this article will illustrate that a little music theory can go a long way particularly with lead guitar.
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