Minor pentatonic scales offer an intuitive yet articulate way to express on the guitar fretboard.
It might not be the traditional choice of the Indian music curriculum, but on the other side of the globe, this is usually what guitar players start with, and that has a lot to do with how much rock has inherited from blues.
The fact gets somewhat undermined that when rock started to take shape and originated around the 1950s, musicians didn't have any rock music to look back at. All they had was Blues and a few other genres, but primarily Blues, which had presided over the last 50 years and was well known.
Many iconic guitar riffs in popular music are based on pentatonic scales because of their simplicity and effectiveness:
"Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple
"Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream
"Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin
So, the minor pentatonic has historic importance in Western music and guitar playing, but more than that, from a theoretical perspective, when you are just using five notes out of a major scale...
By the way, that's the relation between the two scales — I suppose I should go into it first.
Theoretical Clarity: The Relationship Between Major and Minor Pentatonic Scales
How the Minor Pentatonic Derives from the Natural Minor: The A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G) is a subset of the A natural minor scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G), omitting the 2nd (B) and the 6th (F) scale degrees. By doing this, the scale removes some of the harmonic tension, as you mentioned.
Relative Minor and Major Connection: As you pointed out, C major and A minor are relative scales. C major’s pentatonic (C, D, E, G, A) is actually the same set of notes as A minor’s pentatonic but starting on C rather than A. This relationship makes it easy for guitar players to transition between major and minor tonalities, depending on the musical context.
The pentatonic scale and the major scale are very similar. You could think of the pentatonic scale, as the name suggests, as a 5-note scale. It's the same as the major scale, except for the two semitones, or rather intervals—the 4th and 7th, to be specific.
In the key of C, you could think of it as the C major scale without F and B.
As one may notice, these are the two semitones; eliminating them depreciates the available tensions and dissonance in the scale, thus making the pentatonic a safer set of notes to play during a tricky improvisation phrase.
This is something a player comes face to face with when they start improvising over an unconventional set of chords and need some space to breathe, but more on that later.
The pentatonic scale, as I started with, offers a way to be quite expressive on the guitar because, well, shapes are easy to visualize.
Just like with the major scale, the pentatonic has its own 5 shapes. Since there's a relation between the scales theoretically, the same is reflected on the fretboard.
If you have worked out five shapes of the major scale, you could now try to modify and make pentatonic scale shapes out of those.
Another approach would be to improvise using E shape and D shape major scale shapes combined with the pentatonic minor shape, all within the same key.
Oh, I think I am missing a piece of the puzzle, you need to also know the concept of relative minor to make sense of this.
The C major scale and the A minor scale both have the same set of notes, and they are just starting at different notes.
A lot of people may find it almost offensive to think of them as the same scale because music is contextual, the first note that you play sets the mood, and everything you hear beyond that you hear in that context.
So, G might sound really stable after C, but at the same time, it may sound really tense if the predecessor was F sharp in the first place.
Context has a lot to do with music. Amazing how most talented composers are able to instinctively set the mood and phrasing by reading the room (lingering vibes), or in this case, hearing the room.
As a guitar player, you might want to think of and look at these relations between scales because, first of all, it simplifies everything. Duh!
For example, if you know C major and A minor scales are similar, then C major pentatonic is just going to be the C major scale without the 4th and 7th notes.
This can also be applied to the minor scale, so the A minor pentatonic is going to be the A minor scale without the 2nd and 6th notes.
Why did the numbers change?
In case that confused you, when I refer to the C major scale, I am counting C as 1, D as 2, E as 3, and so on, thus I say the 4th and 7th need to be eradicated, namely notes F and B.
In the case of the minor scale, since we are referring to it as the 'minor scale' firsthand, A is going to be counted as 1, B as 2, C as 3, and so on, so in this case, the 2nd and 6th will be the notes, guess what, B and F respectively.
Still, the notes are the same, so the recipe to convert the major or minor scale into pentatonic is the same regardless of their quality—major or minor.
Another reason to be very conscious of this whole or../party going on among notes is harmony.
If you know all the chords of the C major scale, you won't panic to think about chords within the key of the A minor scale.
Again, only the starting point will be different.
In fact, this will also apply to the pentatonic scale.
Now we need to bring in the fact that pentatonic is heavily associated with blues. This is the genre where you break the rules quite a bit, where you play a major 3rd over a minor 3rd and use a lot of chromatism.
Teachers often refer to it as the genre with no rules because you will find justifications to use literally almost any chromatic note within the genre, within the given scale. This is where blues is highly liberal as a genre, and it sounds unlike anything else.
But when incorporated into rock, the nuances are somewhat more in place.
For example, it's not always a very rock thing; you won't commonly find someone playing a major 3rd over a minor in rock. That's just not something you see often.
For guitar players today, I suppose rock is still the go-to learning method and the way to indulge in guitar.
Since the 2000s, hip-hop started taking over, and then electronic music, and obviously, these two genres do not incorporate guitar as much. To really indulge, the only option is to go back.
While genres like hip-hop and electronic music may not feature guitar as prominently as rock, the pentatonic scale is still prevalent in their melodic structures. Hip-hop producers, for instance, often sample old blues and rock records, incorporating pentatonic-based guitar riffs into their beats.
I mean, I am thinking of Polyphia and Animals as Leaders while I say this, but also, that's not the kind of stuff that you play on day one.
Modern guitar virtuosos like Polyphia and Animals as Leaders fuse elements from rock, metal, and jazz fusion, often incorporating complex rhythmic and harmonic ideas. While their music may seem far removed from simple pentatonic scales, the foundational knowledge of these scales provides a base for their more advanced techniques.
The beauty of rock in the first place is that you've got songs like Chasing Cars and Seven Nation Army which you can literally play on day one, well, if it's somewhat simplified.
As a rock guitar player, the pentatonic is of massive importance. In terms of visualization, shapes of the pentatonic scale are much easier at times and a relief for the eyes, major/minor scale, and other associated variations get tedious on the fretboard during weird key modulations.
The first shape of the minor pentatonic has definitely given me moments to breathe.
Fibonacci Sequence and the Pentatonic Scale
The pentatonic scale aligns with mathematical principles found in nature. The frequencies of musical notes in scales follow ratios that resemble Fibonacci numbers, especially in the case of the harmonic series.
The pentatonic scale simplifies these ratios, creating intervals that naturally resonate with our auditory perception. For instance, if we look at the cycle of fifths (C → G → D → A → E), which forms part of the pentatonic scale, it traces a pattern akin to the Fibonacci sequence, which shows up repeatedly in music, nature, and even architecture.
The licks and bending technique, when imported from and practiced via blues into whatever style of playing, whether it be rock, pop, or even Bollywood music, works wonders.
Let's say you're in the studio and you've got this vast library of licks. Changing that stuff, modifying that, and inserting the juicy note, the implicating note, the notes that give away more context, is a great way to come up with amazing-sounding guitar parts.
That was somewhat complicated, I suppose, maybe I need to rephrase it.
Assume that: I know an amazing lick on the A minor pentatonic, and I suddenly choose to incorporate the F note in the lick, pivoting it towards the C major scale, still with the same fluency and expression of blues, which sometimes is missing from those relatively complicated major scale shapes.
An Indian guitar player, I was able to disassociate with classical and cliche phrasing and come up with something new flavor, when needed. At the same time, I shall mention that the pentatonic scale is ubiquitous in global music traditions.
For example:
Indian Classical Music: While the traditional Indian music curriculum focuses on raga systems, there are pentatonic ragas like Raga Bhupali or Raga Durga (both consisting of five notes) that create a similar soundscape to the pentatonic scale.
Chinese and Japanese Music: The pentatonic scale forms the foundation of traditional Chinese (gōng, shāng, jué, zhǐ, yǔ) and Japanese (yo and in scales) music. The use of these scales in ancient folk music shows the scale’s intuitive and universal nature.
African Music: In many African tribal music systems, the pentatonic scale serves as the backbone of vocal melodies, percussion rhythms, and ceremonial music. For example, the music of the Balafon or Kora players often revolves around pentatonic frameworks.
The fun thing is, the same lick could be made into something very interesting by replacing that F note with F sharp. In that case, my lick would be hinting at the G major scale due to the presence of sharp 4th or augmented 4th.
This ties back to the point: the minor pentatonic offers us safe stepping stones during tricky chord sequences or key changes, keeping up the fluency and expression but also not clashing with prominent juicy notes.
And, may introduce the modulations in the key in a very interesting, mind-blowing climax of a situation way.
I realize there's a hint of dissatisfaction and uncertainty in my last paragraph, rooted in the concept of juicy notes, chord tones, and how that F became F sharp.
That, all together is another mega topic to talk about. It's somewhat advanced stuff, so if you don't get it, that's alright. You can come back to this later, or if you'd like to investigate further, try figuring out, "How many pentatonic scales reside within a major scale?".
Say Bye!
Anubhav Kulshreshtha
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