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Update: Welcome one and all to our very first podcast. At the end of this article you will find a link to hear Mark Johnson explaining and demonstrating some of the techniques discussed in this series of articles on soloing. Mark has worked hard on getting this series and its’ accompanying podcast out and I would like to take this opportunity to pass on my sincere thanks for his efforts and stay tuned for many more.
Mark Gibson

You’ve played it straight and blues’d it up, but there are still so many things that can be done with the “Pentabeast”. Too many for me to continue writing articles on. You need to experiment yourself.What notes can you lean on, what notes can’t you lean on? Let your ears be your guide. Unless you’re totally tone deaf, you should trust them.What we need to do now, if you haven’t worked it out for yourself already, is use it in different keys. This is where the puritans will get their way and I’ll stop using the major and minor misnomer. You understand scale steps now. I only used those terms to help your ears differentiate between the tonal qualities of the scale ie; major sounding scale and minor sounding scale.To illustrate let’s look at the E “major” Pentatonic. It is in fact called just plain old E pentatonic. E, F#, G#, B, C#, E. 5 tones plus the octave on top. Hence the name, “PENTatonic”. The misnamed E minor pentatonic is in fact just G pentatonic but we started and finished on E. I probably better elaborate more fully here before you have a meltdown. It’s really quite simple.

Our song is in the key of E, therefore we will solo in E. Makes sense so far, right? Good. Let’s have a look at our 12 bar blues in the key of E again. 12 bar blues generally places NO emphasis on the 3rd of the chord, which we know is G#, the 3rd scale step in E. Now we could indeed use E penatonic with this and theoretically there is no reason why it would be wrong EXCEPT we need to bring our ears into play here. An E major pentatonic scale has all the “nice” notes in it. The sweet notes if you like. Now, since no 3rd is present in the chord, ie; the G#, we really have no use for it in our solo. 12 bar blues is the foundation of rock and roll. Rock and Roll is NOT nice. It was never meant to be. It is not cocktail lounge music. The 6th, the 9th, and the 3rd are too pretty to be used in this application, so we use the relative minor. Freak out slowly and I’ll explain.

To turn a major into a minor we flatten the 3rd scale step, which in E major is G#. Flatten that sucker and it becomes a minor 3rd, G. You follow? If not, read this paragraph again until you do.So we’re ROCKIN’ out in E and there is no third present in the chord so we need to make our solo sound tough and befitting of a rock solo. Now, what’s the relative minor of E? All together now. Flatten the 3rd scale step and we get G!. G pentatonic it is. Formerly referred to as E minor pentatonic. If you’re really stuck on this, let me know and I’ll explain more thoroughly. These articles are written assuming some prior knowledge of the guitar and note placement. They are not intended as a 10 easy ways to learn guitar.Now let’s change keys.

What about C. Keep the same fingering pattern as you had for the E pentatonic but move to the 5th fret position on the neck.(NOTE: The fret position is indicative of the placement of the 1st finger on your left hand.)

What about C minor? Let’s work it out. 3rd scale step of C major is E. C=1, D=2, E=3. Flatten it and we get E flat. There’s our scale. E flat pentatonic. 8th position for that one.Basically when you establish the key of the song and it’s flavour, major or minor, it’s easy to know where to start with your soloing. Just grab the relative Pentabeast by the tail and start swinging it mercilessly.It’s a one size fits all scale that’s safe and easy to use in most applications. But remember, we’ve only scratched the surface here. You have to experiment to get the most out of it. All you need to decide inititially is, major or minor?

The topic of scales and lead solos however is huge. Make no mistake. This brief look at Pentatonics barely scratches the surface of what’s available, but it is a very quick and easy way to get started with soloing as you can’t go too far wrong with this scale. My high school music teacher, Mrs Fischer, God love her, once said that you can’t do anything wrong in music. Just some things are more correct than others. See, I did learn something.

I will podcast some lessons on Pentatonics soon so you can hear them in action. They will also provide backing tracks for you to practice with.

Until next time.

Update: here it is folks, our very first podcast. Click here to to hear it now or right click the link and pick “Save As” to download it.

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