@Nicky-T

2 years ago

Okay, now some of you may be wondering why this looks so easy and sounds so good, but when you play it against a backing track it sounds terrible. Here's why: the A Major scale is not really compatible with the A minor pentatonic (does the major and minor give it away?) Some of the notes are the same, but if you're playing a blues or rock song that works fine with pentatonic, the A major scale has notes that are a terrible clash. The C# sounds fine while playing over an A chord, but play it over a D or E chord, and you're in trouble. If you play the G# in the A Major scale over the A or D chords, ecch (sounds great over the E chord, though)! If you're playing non-blues-based music this approach may work fine. First, for pentatonic players that are stuck in that rut - SING what you want to be playing first - short phrases, and then play them on the guitar. If it sounds boring singing it, it will sound boring playing it. Shorten you "phrases" and don't always go up and down the scale - skip over notes. You'll get better and better at this as you discipline yourself to this. And you will be able to come up with longer, more interesting phrases. You can actually use the method he explains quite successfully if you just move the A Major scale down 2 frets and use the G Major scale instead. This will work WAY better because there are very few "clash" notes in the G Major scale. And you get the benefit of two extra notes that aren't in the pentatonic (pentatonic means 5 tones), plus benefit from some of the ideas he is attempting to express. Just remember that you come back to rest on the A and E notes, just the way he explains, NOT the G and D notes that you might expect in the G scale. There are music theory reasons that this stuff works, but the important thing is that you get to hear what the notes sound like and how to use them. That's where the music theory came from to begin with, anyway. No one sat down and said, "oh, lets come up with a bunch of rules musicians will need to follow." What they did was listen to stuff and figure out what made it sound so good. Then they can have a shortcut to understand how to play certain things. Happy practicing! And don't be afraid to break some of the "rules" sometimes, and if it sounds good to you, well, there's probably another "rule" that you don't know yet that explains why LOL!

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