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Combining Pentatonics to Play Mixolydian

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Today I introduce to you George Ramsay, Co-founder and Guitar Teacher at Bold Music Lessons. George sheds light on combining pentatonics to play mixolydian.

A great example of how get the most out of your pentatonic scales. Learn and reap the benefits!

HERE’S GEORGE

You can’t really talk about soloing on the guitar without understanding pentatonic scales. Normal, or “full” major or minor scales have seven different notes, while pentatonic scales have only 5 notes (hence “pent”).

Klaus has written extensively on this as well as the CAGED system, so I’ll let you read through some of his postings for more info on playing these scales.

Today we will look at creating the Mixolydian scale by combining some major pentatonic with its parallel minor pentatonic.

Mixolydian is used extensively when improvising over the 12 bar blues, other I-IV-V chord progressions, and more generally chord progressions featuring dominant seventh chords.

What the heck is Mixolydian?

Mixolydian is a mode, and modes are really just types of scales, much like major and minor (in fact, major is called the Ionian mode and minor is called Aeolian). Perhaps the simplest way to understand modes is to look at a major scale. Let’s look at C major, where our notes are C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

Playing a major scale (in this case C major) but not starting or ending on C, creates our different modes. For example, the second mode, called Dorian (in this case D Dorian) would look like this: D-E-F-G-A-B-C. Similarly, the fifth mode, called Mixolydian, would have G-A-B-C-D-E-F as its notes. Notice that each of these modes consist of the same seven notes! We are just starting and ending in different places. These are modes.Continue Reading

8 Reasons Why Learning The Blues is So Important

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My oldest brother introduced me to the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I was hooked instantly. I soon took up the guitar and started taking lessons.

Although I was happy in the beginning playing and singing songs by Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, The Beatles and Springsteen, what I really wanted was to learn those beautiful bluesy solos that came from Stevie’s fingers and strings. It took another couple of years before I found the right teacher to teach me those skills. The blues has always been a major influence on my playing ever since.

Whatever you’re playing, whether it’s country, folk, alternative, rock, pop music or jazz it’s always great to combine these and other styles with blues elements or to lean on your blues vocabulary and skills whenever you need it.

There’s also something about the pentatonic / blues scale that no other scale has in store. It’s that raw, crying, heart aching, but also earthy, soulful, honest sound that really comes alive through playing the blues.

Now if that hasn’t convinced you to pick up your guitar and dive into the world of blues, you might want to know what reasons are so important that you do so.

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How to Improve Your Lead Guitar Phrasing

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For guitar players who starting out learning to improvise, it can be quite a challenge.

Playing a bunch of notes within the pentatonic scale (or any scale in that matter) is one thing, but being able to really tell a story with those notes is a complete different thing.

Because that’s what phrasing is all about: “How you tell a story”.

If you’re telling a story you want to draw the audience’s attention. We’ve all come across those boring teachers in the classroom who can’t keep your attention for more than 30 seconds. They talk in the same low monotone voice on and on and on and on. It’s almost like they don’t even breath. They probably don’t. :)

The fact that they can’t keep your attention has nothing to do with the subject, but it has to do with how they present the subject, how they bring you the story. And they forget the most important thing. They have to bring the story to life!

To bring a story to life you want to hear and feel the passion. You can hear that in the way people speak. When people get excited about stuff they tend to raise their voice. If they want to tell you a secret or gossip they start to whisper. If something is really important we will emphasize particular words. When someone tells you a creepy story they’ll start to talk slower, fuel their voice by fire and when the story gets really exciting they’ll suddenly pause to get you to the edge of your seat and then relentlessly take you to the climax.

There are dozen ways to draw the listener’s ears and fortunately for a lot of people that goes without saying. Most people will talk passionately about their new bought car, their cool job or an attractive person of the opposite sex. The same applies to music. You want to hear the same excitement in your soloing. To do so you have to learn great phrasing.

Phrasing is not about what you play but how you play it!

Let’s see what you can do to improve your phrasing and make your playing come alive:
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Pentatonic Scale Shape Exercises Around The Fretboard

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A lot of guitar players use only one pentatonic position / shape: The first position (E shape) it’s because it’s the most comfortable shape to play in.

That’s great if you start out with soloing, in fact it’s better to stay with that for a while to explore all the possibilities and to really be able to improvise with that one shape.

But after some time it’s good to get out that box and discover more of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to attain the freedom to use the entire fretboard for all your rock, blues, country and heavy metal soloing? It’s the next step to becoming a complete guitarist.

To expand your reach on the fretboard beyond the most popular pentatonic position #1 (E shape), you need to learn all five pentatonic positions, also known as shapes. If you haven’t learned the five pentatonic shapes yet check out: The Five Pentatonic Scale Shapes You Must Know

This post is to designed to give you some extra exercises (once you’ve learned the five shapes) to really get those shapes down.

Have fun!
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