Sophisticated Blues is a series where I share the beauty, depth, and nuance of blues guitar. If you prefer audio, check out the free podcast on this topic. There is also an accompanying guitar lesson available on my Patreon (free for this article!)
In Sophisticated Blues #1, we explored a few new terms to differentiate 12-bar blues progressions further. I won’t rehash the entire concept, but here is a nifty diagram that summarizes the main points.
Today we are in the key of A, and I focus on the Major 6th blues aspect of the equation by discussing the major pentatonic scale. Though far less popular than its minor pentatonic sibling, the major pentatonic scale is one of the most valuable scales one could learn irrespective of genre. We are going to get to fine details and licks, but first, let’s begin with the absolute basics.
If you know all of your pentatonic boxes then you already know the major pentatonic scale. You can visualize it in two different ways:
1) Box 1 minor pentatonic scale 3 frets back. (The fret 2 to 5 shape)
2) Box 2 of the minor pentatonic scale. (The fret 5 to 7 shape)
Both actions result in the formation of the major pentatonic scale. It’s comprised of the following intervals: Root, major 2nd, major 3rd, perfect 5th, and major 6th. These intervals are essentially perfect for any type of major tonality improvisation.
The Magic of the Major Pentatonic
We won’t stray too far into jazz theory, but the following concepts will help to demonstrate why this scale is perfect. When improvising in jazz there are “avoid notes” or specific notes to be avoided because they clash with a given chord. For major and dominant chords, the avoid note is the perfect 4th. But although these chords have the same avoid note and the same root-major 3rd-perfect 5th base, you can’t use the same 7-note scales to improvise over both chords. Major 7th chords have a natural 7th and dominant chords have a flattened 7th; as a result, the only scale that fits over both without clash is the humble major pentatonic scale: no 4ths and no 7ths of any variety make it a completely safe choice. What is more, the major 6th over a major chord adds a notable sweetness, and a major 6th over a dominant chord harkens back to early jazz. Both examples are great sounds and options, which shows how versatile and unique this scale is, but let’s get back to blues.
A few basic tips on using major musically:
You can and should practice adding a musical vibrato to every note.
Experiment with bending the major 6th a half step up to the minor 7th. Since we are playing over dominant chords, the minor 7th is a great note to emphasize.
Experiment with adding in the minor 3rd degree between the scale’s major 2nd and major 3rd as shown in the diagram below. This is the same chromatic tone you would usually add to create the “blues scale” in a minor pentatonic context.
The Minor 3rd’s Utility
*Minor 3rd and b3 are two terms to describe the same note*
You can move from the minor 3rd to the major 2nd or the major 3rd with a slide or bend. These movements contribute to a few signature major pentatonic licks. In the examples below, I provide “A licks” and “B licks” over the A7 chord that emphasize the minor 3rd connection to the major 2nd and major 3rd. Instead of the notated slide, you can, of course, bend, hammer on, or pull off between the notes. We will explore phrase structures in greater detail in a future article. For now, you can think of A and B licks as call and response or starting an idea and concluding your thought. In the example below, either of the two B licks can be a response to the A lick. You can also play both B licks back to back. As you can hear, these phrases have a very different flavor when compared to minor pentatonic licks you may already be familiar with.
*Important lick learning disclaimer*
You probably hear these licks and think to yourself, “That sounds corny/boring/hokey.” You are correct. The truth is, many guitarists approach teaching licks the wrong way. The point of learning these licks is NOT to play them exactly as they are notated. In fact, if you ever find yourself wondering how to remember all of your licks, you probably do not have the best lick-learning approach. Licks like those shown in this article are examples of common movements and concepts that you use to further explore your uniqueness through organized sounds and silences: music. If you hope to become a fantastic author, you don’t start by copying the sentences of John Steinbeck. You also don’t tell your grade one teacher that “the boy ran fast” isn’t a sentence worth studying because it is too basic. I believe this is yet another topic better left for a separate article. Let us return to the major pentatonic scales.
Major Over All Blues Chords
When playing the 12-bar blues, especially our Major 6th Blues, you can use the major pentatonic scale over all three chords; however, you must use the major pentatonic scale that corresponds to each chord and NOT just the one chord’s major scale over everything. Thus, we need to learn a different major pentatonic for each chord of our blues. If this is starting to sound daunting, don’t panic just yet. If you know all of your pentatonic shapes, this should still be fairly simple. You can also refer to the accompanying guitar lesson for this article on Patreon. Although we will eventually explore these concepts on every inch of the guitar neck, we are only going to use one region for our sample licks.
4 Chord
Our 4-chord major pentatonic shape is going to correspond to box 5 of our minor pentatonic scale. When you transition from the 1-chord major pentatonic to the 4-chord major pentatonic, there is just 1 note difference: the 4th.
We can also add the minor 6th between the 5th and the major 6th of the 4-chord diagram.
This works because the minor 6th of the 1 chord is the same thing as the minor 3rd of the 4 chord. In other words, we are using the same minor 3rd trick we learned in the prior section but transposing it to the 4 chord. This transposition is a lot more clear if we change the intervals to reflect the 4 chord instead of the 1 chord. For now, you can also learn the shapes and licks without worrying about the intervals. We have an interval lesson coming very soon!
Now that we understand the intervallic and pentatonic differences between the major over the 1 chord and the major of the 4 chord, we can play some sophisticated blues. One of the most powerful sounds in all of improvisation is moving between chords in the most seamless way possible. Between our discussion and sample licks, we have a few concepts to work on mastering.
We now know that we can move from the major 3rd of the 1 chord to the root note of the 4 chord. That will be the simplest and cleanest way to voice the transition between these two chords.
We can also do the reverse when moving from the 4-chord back to the 1-chord.
The example A lick is a different approach whereby we use a simple three-note walk-up to transition from the 1 chord to the 4 chord.
The example lick moving from the 4 chord back to the 1 chord applies the same three-note walk-up back to the 1 chord.
5 Chord
The 5 chord of any progression is a fun thing to explore. Since the goal of the 5 chord is to create tension that resolves to the 1 chord, you can play literally anything over the 5 chord as long as it resolves correctly. As a result, we often throw in all of our crazy stuff on the 5 chord…but that is a topic for a future article. Since we are focusing on the major approach here, we are going to take the same 4 chord shape and move up a whole step. Our sample lick for the 5 chord then uses the same concepts that we used on the 4 chord. Remember, at this stage, we are just getting used to the sound and the overarching concepts. We cannot create meaningful complexity without starting with simplicity.
These last sample licks were purposefully created with a lot of space in between them. This is your opportunity to experiment with filling in the gaps with some of the pentatonic knowledge we covered in this article and whatever else you already know.
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