Cool event

[Caffeinated Cat]

Every night I spend an hour jammin' on the pentatonic minor scale, Just practicing soloing. And every night I'm looking for new ideas to make my solos sound more interesting. So, the other night I'm jammin' over a rhythm track, and I play aeolian mode for a bit - not long because this is my pentatonic practice, but I hit the interval of the flat 6th in aeolian and it just sounds magical. It increases the emotional content of the music by 200%. I play for a minute and I'm inspired - all my "same old crap" is gone, and the licks are playing themselves. The phrases are writing themselves. It was way better than anything I usually play.

Pure magic!

Lasted for about 10 minutes, then that extra note got old and the inspiration went away. Funny, there wasn't a b6 in the bass line I was jammin' to, but for some reason that extra note just struck me as the perfect compliment for pentatonic minor, at that moment, over that rhythm.

Anybody else got some stories like that? Maybe we could all pick up a tip or two.

[Morbid]

Yea I know waht you mean! I think Jimmy Page uses that note in the Stairway to heaven solo.

[Dommy]

I see the minor pentatonic scales as shells which you can fill in with various combonations of 6's (m6,M6) and 2's (b2,2), which give a sort of different vibe. Same goes with major pentatonic, you can fill them up with different types of 4ths, and 7ths, giving it a different type of feel, lydian, mixolydian, major, lydian b7...its a somewhat useful tool for getting something different out of your pentatonic patterns, but its not something I would heavily rely on when trying to do modal stuff.

What I really like to do for a Pink Floyd, wistful, minor feel is add the 9th to it and play around with that. If I'm playing a blues, I like to add the 9th and 13th for a semi-jazzy vibe.

[szulc]

http://www.ibreathemusic.com/article/30