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Home 1. Soloing, Scales & Modes A Shaw Thing Connecting
Pentatonic Scales
A Shaw Thing Connecting
Pentatonic ScalesPosted on July 15, 2013by Jason 13 Comments
Take (Any) Five: the great Woody Shaw
Mention pentatonics in jazz and people will probably immediately
think of Coltrane and McCoy
Tyner. They might also think of trumpeter Woody Shaw, who
developed pentatonic playing to an
incredible level. Woodys kaleidoscopic approach involved zipping
across multiple tonalities on
each chord by using collections of pentatonics. First things
first though for now, well stay within
the sound of the chord.
It is often taught that over any given chord we could use this,
that or the other pentatonic. True
enough, but its better to say that we shoulduse this, thatandthe
other pentatonic.
As Woody well knew (as did Trane and McCoy), you really unlock
the potential of the pentatonic
sound by assimilating the pentatonic scales as sets or families
and constantly combining them. (They
also realised that the structure implied by pentatonics is so
strong that you can even deliberately play
the wrong ones and itll sound good. But as I said, thats for
another day.)
A really useful quick way to remember which scales go with a
minor 7th chord is to note that the
roots form a II-V-I-VI pattern (a turnaround) based on the
root.
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Were going to look at Cm7. The scales that go with this chord
are:
Dm pentatonic (II)
Gm pentatonic (V)
Cm pentatonic & Cm6 pentatonic (I)
A pentatonic (VI)The same scales also serve over Eb+4 the
relative major (Lydian and Dorian are in the same
relative relationship as classical major and minor Ionian and
Aeolian). Learning the two chords as
a pair is a very efficient way of practising, but be aware that
each tone from the scales will have a
different effect in the context of the relative major.
THE EXERCISES
There are ways of connecting the pentatonic scales that fit over
each chord by shifting just one note
at a time. The exercises shown below demonstrate two examples of
this Ive marked the notes that
change to make things clearer. (Hopefully.)
Play through the exercises first with a Cm7 playalong, then with
an Ebplayalong, and keep your
ears tuned to hear the different effects of the tones in
particular the A, which is the natural 6th in C
(Dorian) minor and the #4th in Eb (Lydian) major.
You can then take the exercise through the other keys, and use
them as models to devise similar
ways of linking pentatonics over other chord qualities.
Ive occasionally had people say to me: Hey, youre the guy with
the pentatonic book, right? Ididnt hear it in that last number. I
can honestly reply by quoting Woody: Just about everything I
play is a pentatonic. (But Im constantly stringing bits of
different ones together, sometimes inside
the chord sound and sometimes outside it.)
I seem to recall that Woody also once said something along the
lines of: If you cant play
melodically with pentatonic scales you dont properly understand
them. With any luck this article
will give you a good kick-start on that road.
PS If you really cant wait to get your outside stuff on, try
doing the same exercise with C#m7 (and
E+4), then weaving between the two sets.
