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Ruslan Sirota
Posted 4 years ago

ON PENTATONIC SCALES

I’ll give it to you straight: this is why I’m not a fan of pentatonic scales.. for most players. For someone who knows what the hell they are doing — Sure! Pentatonic scales are great shapes! But that’s probably 5% of all players on here. For the rest of the players, pentatonic scales serve as shortcuts, crutches and avoidance strategies to not deal with the real issue at hand — playing right god damn notes over they chords they’re improvising on.

In the wrong hands, which i consider to be most hands, Pentatonic scales are not only short cuts to avoiding wrong notes, but also — they impoverish the color palette of the solo. Sure, you are less likely to hit wrong notes. But why is that? It is because the pentatonic scales avoid a ton of scale-notes to begin with, thus throwing many of the beautiful, colorful RIGHT notes out of the window, along with all the potential wrong ones. A bitter trade. To me, that’s throwing a whole kindergarten out with the bath water, not just a baby.

If you know what ur doing — please use pentatonics all you want. Like Chick Corea for example, who plays pentatonic scales all the time in a myriad of creative and inventive ways. But if this is not you just yet — then throw these pentatonic shortcuts out of your vocabulary for a good 6 months and learn to truly PAINT each chord with the full available palette of notes each chord scale has to offer.

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Ruslan Sirota
Posted 5 years ago

What music book do you wish you could find on the market and buy? On what musical topic?

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Ruslan Sirota
Posted 5 years ago

WHAT HAPPENED TO ROCK N' ROLL?!


What happened to rock n' roll is the same thing that happened to Jitter-Bug or RagTime. Its simply not culturally relevant anymore, and so - it is no longer mainstream.


Relevant music and arts must draw their aesthetic values from CULTURE in order to be relevant. This is why contemporary musics and arts resonate with contemporary people in the first place. People sense their own lives and their own culture in that music, and so, they like it. Take those cultural values out of the music - and no one will listen to it, because it will no longer subconsciously resonate with CURRENT REALITY.


When culture moves on, new art comes along with it. Art with CURRENT and RELEVANT aesthetic values. Ones drawn from the CURRENT culture, which is why the new, current music resonates with the new, current people. Again, people sense their own lives and their own culture in that music, and so, they like it.


Now, you and I don't have to like the new culture or the new aesthetics. You and I may find these new values to be vane, shallow and dumb! But that does not change the mechanics by which art and music keep their relevance. Art and music only keep their relevance by directly resonating with current cultural values, for better or worse.


Rock n' roll simply does not resonate with the underlying aesthetics and values of our new Instagram, online, anti-depressants culture and the people of this culture. Why would rock n' roll still be popular in today's world? In a world where teen angst is being suppressed by pills, and so it needs not find ways to come out, like Nirvana's angst needed to come out, or other groups before it..


It doesn't mean there aren't some amazing, marginalized rock n' roll groups out there! But it DOES mean that rock n' roll is no longer mainstream, and for understandable reasons. Music does not come from music. Music comes from CULTURE. When culture changes - its prevalent music does, too.. for better or worse.

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Ruslan Sirota
Posted 5 years ago

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Ruslan Sirota
Posted 5 years ago

When making this video, I never knew it would see such success and help so many people! 50k views is a big step for me :)

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