Guillaume jeulin (guillaume.jeulin[at]bluecatonline.org)

Pentatonic Scales and Modes

Introduction

Tired of playing always the same patterns on the same scales in your improvisations? This article relates an experiment using modes in order to renew those good old pentatonic scales and give them unusual colors. Several approaches are discussed here:

• Add some notes to a pentatonic scale to use the color of a mode
• Modify the pentatonic scale notes in order to generate new pentatonic scales with specific modes colors

Prerequisites

Basics of harmony, scales, modes and intervals are recommended. For more information about modes, you can read my article “Petit Formulaire des Modes” (French).

Pentatonic scale harmonic structure

Let’s start by having a look at the classic pentatonic scales we mostly use in modern occidental music (many other pentatonic scales exist). We will use as an example the A minor scale, corresponding in terms of notes to the C major scale:

 

Applying modes to Pentatonic scales

Applying modes to those scales is now easy: you can either add notes to the scale (which won’t be pentatonic anymore by the way) when they are not part of the harmonic structure of the scale, or modify the existing intervals so that they fit into the chosen mode intervals. This operation can be done on both minor and major pentatonic scales.

Minor Pentatonic modified by modes

 

 

Major Pentatonic modified by modes

 

 

Combined Scales

If we bring all these scales to the same tonic (let’s say A), this gives us a bunch of new pentatonic or extended pentatonic (hexaphonic here) scales to try:

 

 

In order to name these scales, we will use the combination of the mode and origin scale: for example, the first scale of the table above (upper-left) will be “Lydian-Minor Pentatonic” and the last one “Locrian-Major Pentatonic”, even if major and minor terms do not qualify the color of the corresponding scales. This is just a naming convention.

How does it sound?

Not all these scales will sound easy to your ears, but as a beginning you can try the ones which are not that far from the standard pentatonic scales but which have a very specific color. As an example:

• Myxolydyan -Minor Pentatonic: typical myxolydian sounding and very close to the minor pentatonic, very useful on seventh chords because of its major third. (try this E scale on E7!)
•  Dorian-Major Pentatonic: minor by its third, but major by its sixth, very interesting color of the dorian mode, sounds not that usual to our ears because of its major pentatonic origin.
• Dorian-Minor Pentatonic: extended minor pentatonic scale with the sixth, quite usual actually.

The strangest sounding one might be the Lydian-Minor scale, but it is very interesting to try it to add new colors to your solos.   

How to use them?

Their usage is the same as modes, since this is how we generated them. But as their harmonic structure is simpler (some notes are missing), they might be used more often. Further more you have two possibilities on each mode since you have two different sounding scales for the same mode.

First try to play them with only the tonic as a pedal, as you would do with modes. This will help you to learn and appreciate the color of each scale.

The first step for playing them is then to use the scale corresponding to the chord being played. You can see that each scale has specific notes that qualify the mode from which it comes (see intervals row in previous tables). For example play E Myxolydyan-Minor Pentatonic on E7 chord,  Phrygian-Major on E9b chord etc.

Then you might a broader analysis of the harmony of the song and play a scale depending on the chord progression. A typical example is to play the E dorian mode (especially the Dorian-Minor extended Penta) on a Em7 / A7 progression. The C# will be great to announce the major third of the A7 chord.

 

Then any idea is welcomed... Practice and give a try to each scale! Whatever you play, make it sound different and appreciate it!

 

Any comment, question, related information? Please contact me!