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Yea... I still like using Pents... it's fun. I mean you don't always need to perform for everyone else. It's cool to have fun. I couldn't remember the vid I posted... but found it. Dolphin Dance... my improve is all Pent based and Maj7 arps... I just checked it out... it's cool, I don't really have the chops of my youth but I'm still having fun. I remember when I made this vid for JGF... that night at one of my gigs I call Dolphin and extended that vamp in between choruses, anyway we went over the top.
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04-29-2020 08:21 PM
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Okay. I'll be honest. Those pentatonic runs are a complete blindspot in my ability to see/hear. I feel pretty certain that if I actually learned those sequences that you posted several weeks ago using pentatonic's , that I would probably be able to hear them a lot better. But it's definitely something that I think you probably basically have to be able to play in the first place to hear.
Also, there is the YouTube bandwidth/bit rate/quality thing. Slowdown feature somewhat breaks down at the speed you're playing some of these pentatonic runs, though I've never tried to transcribe this one.
Is there a possibility you could do something with this "human speed"? :-)
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Originally Posted by Reg
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There's sophisticated rock guitarists, too. It ain't all beating a pentatonic into submission unless that's what you settle for. EJ, Vai, Satriani, Skolnick. Funny enough, both EJ and Satch use pentatonics liberally, but do so modally and thereby avoid the cliches.
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Most rock guitarists seem to be constrained by thinking of the fretboard as a series of territories, most of which remain unexplored. The twelfth fret, in particular, is a barrier: they play on either side, but not over it. The physical effect of this limited approach can be seen on the fretboards of guitars for sale: the wear is concentrated in two or three areas. Study of Reg’s rather superb rendition of Dolphin Dance would be of great benefit to their owners.
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Next, I added a couple of notes to the minor pent because I was listening to Carlos Santana, Terry Kath, Tommy Bolin etc. Found out later it was Dorian mode.
BOX patterns
just fiddle with a lot of three note thingys
My feeling about all of this is, these are just FACTS of the guitar. Not music.
In the cases of both triads and pentatonics it's the intervals which are the important things. That's why we enjoy learning and playing them. It's an easy way to sound interesting, but it's also easy to sound mindnumbingly tedious. If you don't think melodically or musically and only think technically you will only be 'fiddling' with triads, or playing 'boxes'. It's certainly happening with major scales too; just listen to some of the unthinking streams of quavers, the predictable patterns which were interesting at the start of a fashion and which are now just clichés.
Don't play technically! Don't run 'your stuff'! Have some humility and LISTEN to what you're playing (and the backing as importantly), then it won't matter how you did it. Pentatonics, triads and the rest are all just combinations that it's worth knowing as you can be 'located' on the wasteland of the fingerboard when you know them.
But 'the map is not the territory' (my favourite quote) and you have to think about what you are saying, otherwise it's just so much note running.
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Hey Matt... yea. I'll make some PDFs of expanded use of pents. And possible fingerings. The difficult part... is I don't just use one or two techniques etc... I generally have a few layers of BS going on. But sure that's a good idea. I'll get some posts.
This sort of opens that door to what one plays and what one hears. Some play a med. tempo line of single notes, some use that same approach but the single notes are small collections of notes. And those collection of notes can have a few different organizations going on.
What's the difference between playing single notes... and creating a melody or melodic line. Or creating a melody or melodic line using.... single licks.
I'll get into the different approaches...
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Here's another example from way back... last century, I think it was from a session at N Texas.... I suck... but I suck with pents.LOL
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Hey Hugo:
I smiled at this as I did the same thing, but through watching and listening to Rory Gallagher, an Irish rocker. Getting the two 'good notes' (9 and 6) behind the barré was a real opener. Until I did that to death too...
I look at pentatonics as triad arpeggios with 2 notes added or a 7 note scale - 2 notes. Playing a pentatonic sequence riff a fret higher than the key signature is a device some Jazzers use now and then. I'd guess that most here have heard that done many times.
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I think one of the problems with all this is that certain things have been separated out for assessment - pentatonics here, triads there, scales here, other things there. As though they were all separate from each other.
When I play, I chuck the whole thing in together. I may have learnt them separately, obviously, but, in playing, one uses everything as a whole. If I need a scale, I use it. Then I might see a pentatonic would sound good, so in it goes. Coming to an altered sound, I'd use whatever worked at that point... and so on.
We might learn these things one by one but in real life it all gets thrown into the mix together; everything compliments everything else.
I think that produces the best music.
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Pentatonics were around before Eric Clapton! Anyone still listen to Swing? Or even just Pres? I'm talking major pentatonic, with and without the usual chromatic passing notes. Sure there's the half dozen or so patterns we all went crazy for in our youth that is the minor pent "Rock" sound, but when you crossed to over to Jazz I hope you signed on pledging to never, ever, use those licks in a Jazz setting! For me, and plenty of others I'm sure, it's an immediate turn off, especially the bendy licks or the "too much vibrato" thing...
It took me a long time to get re acquainted with pents after I realised that the 60's horn and piano cats were using them in particular ways. Now I treat them as 5 tone arpeggios and make up my own variations for different chords in different settings. It was a great way to introduce wider intervals with out straight arps as I tend to like heavy chromaticism and needed to break things up. A different pent type for Subdom, one for Dom, one for Alt Dom and one for Maj tonic can go a long way and make you sound like you're hitting every change. The other thing I'll say is that it's easy to sound melodic when you limit your choices to just 5 notes per chord. Just that one extra note (when compared with the normal 4 note arp) makes so much difference! And eliminating 2 notes from the full scale or mode makes it easier to avoid clangers while being easier to pre hear - which will allow you to really "sing" with your lines.
I have shown this idea to rock guys wanting to improv over jazz type tunes, and their usual instinct is to play those damn lick based lines, so you need to show them ways to replace old habits with new. Not everyone is happy to do that, but at least one guy was, who once shown, was soon playing legit sounding swing era type lines against common standards. Interestingly he also seemed to get the ways to fill in chromatically just by hearing where it worked and where it didn't.
Now, compare that to how he might have fared trying to learn jazz improv from books, or even a teacher bent on teaching how he/she learned things. I can tell you with certainty that guys like him have no patience and will throw in the towel at the first hurdle. He listens to jazz now and gets the language better. He's listening to more bop and hard bop and tries to find an approximation of that language through this pentatonic "prism". He's onto alt sounds by using dim arps with added notes, or TT subbing dom pents. He's covering all the food groups and doing it organically. Damn it, it took less than a couple of years to sound Jazzy crossing over from straight blues rock. It took me considerably longer!
So yeah, pents are a great way to crossover, rock guys are used to 2 notes per string and can pre-hear pents way easier than full scales. Even just adding 9ths to arps is a good rule of thumb, and being aware of swapping or adding 6ths and 7ths. Get them to practice over ii V I VI(alt) , and they get to understand how the 4 main food groups work together. Then point them to AL and ATTYA and off they go... I've mentioned this a couple of times in the past, but I really feel that to keep Jazz guitar alive, we need to help the rockers cross over to the real dark side! Without scaring them, but also without holding their hand for too long either ...
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Nice post Prince...
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I got sunshine on a cloudy day.
The My Girl lick is a straight major pentatonic.
Sing that to yourself and then improvise using those notes.
Then, find another harmonic application, strum the chord and sing those notes, improvising with them.
Seems to me this might be a good thing to do.
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Originally Posted by Reg
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Originally Posted by Reg
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
That aside, I think the term "pentatonics" is a misnomer, especially in the context of blues and blues-derived music. The "minor third" is, in fact, an infinitely variable range of inflections, each of which communicates a distinct tonality and corresponding emotion. Also, the third in blues often has a rising inflection from minor toward major. This movement conveys meaning, which is why blues is so deceptively difficult.
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Good enough for Barry Harris good enough for me.
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Looks like that G7 might be G7alt ...isn't that an Ab
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Originally Posted by Reg
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I posted that analysis to point out that, at the master level of Dr Harris, when certain things are demonstrated to be available we probably would be wise not to resign them to one genre.
As for the G7...although I don't have all of BH's materials I don't think he thinks in those terms.
Over G7 I believe he was thinking G7 ok, tritone...C#7 dim scale...so, whole-tone run and I'll land on the 5 of C#7.
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Yea could be Db7#11 or C#7, (what's the difference), the point was it didn't look like Whole tone.
Sorry Wilson... OK it's C#whole tone with an added nat. 5th... my mistake.
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I don’t think Barry would bother writing G7alt. No point. You can always use the Db7 on a G7. Or a whole tone. Or Abm6-dim. Or Bb7. Or whatever.
Barrys thinking is very chunked. Basic chords in the chart are elaborated through improvisation.
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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