Guitar II: Major, minor, Blues, and the kitchen sink...

We have been breaking down some scales in class and discussing their usefulness in terms of improvising and riff construction.

We started out with the the minor pentatonic...
This is the classic rock and blues solo scale. By law you must play this if you own a guitar.

For today's purposes we will be working in the key of A:


Next we introduced the The Blues into the equation...
The Blues scale adds some notes that take the minor pentatonic and make it a bit grittier. You can see that a couple of notes have been added to the pentatonic shape.



We played a lick or two using the Major Pentatonic...
The Major pentatonic is the opposing sound to the minor pentatonic. This scale has a lighter quality when played in rock and blues. Ideally you want to find ways to mesh the minor and major scales to together.



Which brings us to...
You can view these scales as separate entities and work with them separately, or you can start to think of them as parts to a whole. Many great soloists build solos that seamlessly combine elements of each type of scale into one scale which, for today's purposes, we'll call the "kitchen sink" scale.



Try that on for size! This scale has elements that will work in a Major or minor Blues, over chord changes in A. There are a lot of options for the aspiring soloist. Have fun with it.