Why does Minor Pentatonic fit everywhere?

[FuseHead]

More thoughts on the type of experimenting I used to do in the extreme.....

Play E Flat Major over E major. Take a note or two out of E Flat major and even though it still sounds bizarre, you can hear it actually working.

To your initial question. There are just enough notes missing out the major scale in a pent that it just starts to work being played over many more chords and scales.

Admittedly, a lot of guitarists are way better at chord theory than I am, but man did I live and breath scale theory to the point of ridiculous in my first couple of years of learning to play.

The trap I still fall into when improvising is that I tend to try a zillion spur of the moment ideas when soloing over whatever in the measures I have available, so I just come off sounding crazed and not organized. Like in 4 available measures I may try 20 or more totally different melodic or maybe even not so melodic ideas. For good or bad it is just the way my brain works musically.

[Mykola]

Well I am a fuse head.(Fusion composer and player) so often times those clashes come off as genius to me personally. I mean in hard core fusion it is sort of expected to always be pushing the envelope right?

Exactly! I thought about it. We are not actually aiming for perfect sonority, some clashes act as a necessary element of surprise or tension. This is what makes music interesting, adding some "color" or "mood" to otherwise boring and uniform sound combinations.

[Noah D'Innocenzo]

I am curious, why Minor Pentatonic is so universal. It fits over major chords, and the same tonic scale can even be used over every chord in blues progression. Theoretically, there should be too many clashes with the chord notes, but it sounds good.

So, is there a reasonable explanation for this?

The minor pentatonic (without the b5/#4) works so well over so many things because it's a scale lacking half steps. Without those half steps, it becomes very open. There's never a "Ti" to aim at a "Do." This is also why people like McCoy use it as a soloing device so much, especially over quartal harmony, which in and of itself is also very open. That's why in modal tunes there's a lot of half step movements of the quartal voicings to create tension that is otherwise lacking from staying in one mode and voicing chords without any sort of "ti."

In a more vague, philosophical way, it has often been concluded that any chord can resolve to any chord and any melody can "work."

If you're talking the actual blues scale, the b5 is a passable dissonance because of the fact that it resolves up to the 5 or down to the 4, so the dissonance, even in its sharpest, most "whoa" moments, ends up getting resolved someway, somehow. Of course, if you don't know what you're doing and/or you yourself are not prepared for the dissonance, it can cause you to make mistake because you, like the audience, were also caught off guard and this causes you to blunder the resolution which leads to it sounding "bad."

Hope this helps.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Stevebol]

This video came up in another thread;

It's clear what he's doing in the first example which is C pentatonic over a Bb major chord. I can't quite make out what what he's doing with the other examples.

[Stevebol]

D-6 pentatonic means a Dm6 chord I assume.
To my ears the C pentatonic works over a Dm6 chord. I couldn't make sense of the 'altered dominant'.

[Melodic Dreamer]

When thinking in terms of Gb Pent over G13 I've always just thought Eb Pent or start a pent-scale up a #5. It just makes the shape easier for me to see. Might help someone, might not... who knows.

[Stevebol]

To apply this I have to think of the chord being used first. For example, a Bbmaj7 along with closely related chords with an added 6th or 9th. Then I think of which pentatonic to use, either minor or major.
A minor pentatonic is a half step away from Bb so it's easy to apply.

I already use a kind of minor 6th scale(or licks) for mb5 chords, such as Dm6 scale over a Bm7b5 chord. I visualize the minor chord (Bm7b5) and think- up a minor 3rd and add a 6th.

We're probably going to come up with our own method to apply pentatonics. As we should. Some chords don't really stand alone and they feel like they're going to resolve to something such as minor b5 chords.
A major 7th chord when used with a minor pentatonic a half step down has some interesting dissonance.

[bako]

Now you've lost me completely. Can we just put together anything with 5 notes in it? I suppose we can...

I am quite sure that we can. Coming up with names for all the many possible variations that will be understood........

The common major pentatonic formula is 1 2 3 5 6 applied to various modes generically yields:

1 2 3 5 6
1 2 b3 5 6
1 b2 b3 5 b6
1 2 b3 5 b6
1 b2 b3 b5 b6

1 b2 b3 5 6
1 2 3 #5 6
1 2 3 5 b6
1 2 b3 b5 b6

1 b2 b3 b5 6
1 b2 3 5 b6
1 #2 3 5 6

1 2 b3 b5 6
1 b2 3 5 6
1#2 3 #5 6

[pauln]

So many things may be called pentatonic that it gets a little wonky naming them, and some of the patterns share different names depending on perspective. And if you take them shifty chromatic for example it may be conceptually easier to match (force) the patterns to an incorrect name...

Try playing these four chords and four pentatonic patterns (which naturally pick up altered tones)

Ebm7 (Db major pentatonic descending from Db or Bb minor pent descending from Db)
D9b5 (D major pentatonic descending from D or B minor pent descending from D)
Db 69 (Eb major pentatonic descending from Eb or C minor pent descending from Eb)
Bb 13 (E major pentatonic descending from E or Db minor pent descending from E)

Both pent pairs for each chord are the same pitches, but it may be easier to think of their patterns named one way or the other (or even another).

[diminix]

Now you've lost me completely. Can we just put together anything with 5 notes in it? I suppose we can...

-> OpenStax CNX (Pentatonic Scales: Theory and Applications)

Robert

[christianm77]

I often play a descending m6 pentatonic as a sub for straight up m6 arpeggio. This type of note formation also pops up in melodies occasionally - Lady be Good is an example.

The 2 notes a string thing makes it practical for descending DWPS picking, which is why they are often employed by Gypsy style players, but beyond that I haven't used them on purpose much.

This BH dominant scale gives the important m6 pentatonic on the downbeats.

1 7 b7 6 5 4 3 b3 2 b2 1

C Bb G E D = G Bb C D E

Another way to view the m6 arpeggio is simply as a dominant 9th arpeggio where the 9th is in the same octave as the dom7.

In general I divide things into two categories - stuff with a resolving dominant function tritone (m6, dom7, dim7, m6, melodic minor, pent etc) and stuff without (maj7, 6, pentatonic, dorian)

[Stevebol]

Penta means 5. Add a note to the scale and it's not pentatonic anymore.

[guido5]

Penta means 5. Add a note to the scale and it's not pentatonic anymore.

Add one and it is a Hexatonic scale. Much different...

[Thumpalumpacus]

Loves me some modal pentatonics, learnt that from listening to Eric Johnson, amongst others.

[generalduke]

I might be missing something here. I thought Dm pent was D F G A C. Obviously yours is a different kind of pentatonic. But it has a B in it, hence Dm6. Where does the E come from? Who makes this stuff up??!

I suppose we can...

I see it as B-7(b5) Pentatonic. It spells like the well known minor pentatonic (1 b3 4 5 b7) but uses the b5 instead of the regular 5 (1 b3 4 b5 b7) or B D E F A.
P.S. You could also see it as a D major pentatonic (1 2 3 5 6) with a flatted third (1 2 b3 5 6 or D E F A B)