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So you’ve looked at the basic Pentatonic scale and now you want to liven it up a bit.Excellent Grasshopper.As I mentioned before, the Pentatonic scale is the basis of my soloing Kung Fu, and my Kung Fu is strong. I assume if you’ve grasped the principles of part one, then yours too is becoming somewhat kickass.

Were your friends impressed as I said they would be? Well let’s now totally melt their minds and add some colour to this Pentabeast. As I quickly mentioned in the last article, there are little things you can add for flavour. I mentioned getting full on bluesy. So let’s do a recap of that one first.It’s as easy as adding one note to the scale. Let’s stick with our original key of E. What we can add to this is the flat 5th step. In the key of E, the 5th step is B. As I will be discussing scale steps more frequently from this point, I probably better show you where they’re coming from.E major scale consists of E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#, and E. It’s a simple matter of numbering those steps 1 through 8. I’m sure you can see what I’m saying, but just in case, I’ll spell it out. E=1, F#=2, G#=3 etc etc. Ahaaa..instant epiphony! Sweet.

I don’t want to get heavily into it here, but we can, and often do, go beyond 8. “What the….??? There’s only 8 notes in the major scale”. Well, 7 if you want to get technical. The 8th is just counted as an octave. “What’s an octave?”, no time for that now. We must move on. The higher steps come into play in chord construction. 9th chords, 11th chords, 13th chords, major 9th’s etc etc. Don’t worry about it now. We’ll cover it later………much later. Back to getting bluesy with the pentatonic. Do you remember when I said in the last article, if your jamming over a 12 bar blues progression then stick with the minor pentatonic? I hope so, otherwise you better go back and have another quick look. It’s ok, I’ll wait for you.

Ok. Generally the 3rd is not strongly, if at all, emphasised in a 12 bar progression. So we just use our minor pentatonic, BUT in addition to that we are going to throw in the flat 5 or B flat,(fig.1). A word of warning. Don’t ride the B flat or you’ll get a major “eeeewwwww”. Just use it as a passing note. A passing note is not emphasised or sustained. It’s just briefly touched on while going somewhere else. When you play the “Blues Scale”, you should hear what I mean.

So go give it a try. So did that sound way cool, or what? Stay tuned for more ways to bend the “Pentabeast” out of shape in future articles.I just want to make a note here about the diagrams I use and why. As this is about soloing, I just give you the notes on a neck diagram because the order you play them in is entirely up to you. It’s your solo and it’s a personal thing. I’ve already written about practicing scales and given some useful tips on it in other articles. However, if you’d really like anything written out in musical notation then let me know.

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