Introduction
Hello there, in my first article I tried to introduce you to some exotic scales as well as give you an approach on how to "make up" your own exotic sounding scales (you can always cheat and buy a book with a million scales but what's the fun in that right? :) ) and in the end I promised I would give some advice on how to apply them to real music so here I am once again bringing you the second part of the "Improvising with Exotic Scales" series and this time I'll show you some approaches that will help you get the most out of these scales. So let's get started.
Even though you can get some pretty wicked sounds when you fiddle around with these scales while jamming on a pedal riff or some 2 chord trash/speed progression, there also thousands of possibilities when you create music around these scales. Take as an example the Hirajoshi scale (pretty much Eric V's trademark and Marty Friedman uses it quite a bit too) with a 1 2 3b 5 6b structural formula (it kind of sounds like physics doesn't it? :) ). It's the most known Japanese scale among guitarists, here are two easy patterns:
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
You can figure out other patterns or even get crazy and do 3 NPS if you want. And as an exercise try using a drone playing statically each one of the tones (notes, degrees, whatever ;)) in the scale while you play one of these progressions (kind of what I did with the harmonic minor scale in the previous article) to help you get the feel of each one of the modes on this scale.
Harmonization
This scale is also really cool harmonically speaking; let's try making triads out of this one. We have these notes available:
A B C E F
Some of the triads we could build on each root could be:
A C E (Amin) A B E (Asus2) A C F (Am#5)
B E F (Bb5sus4) B C F (B no 3rd b5 b9)
C E A (CMaj6) C E F (Cadd11) C E B (C Maj7)
E A B (E sus4) E B C (E <no 3rd>add6)
F A C (F Maj) F A B (FMaj #11) F B C (F no 3rd #11)
If you extend the chords and start using 4 note or even larger chords, the choices grow. Now as an exercise go back and try doing this to the other scales I gave you in the previous article (that should keep you busy for a while) again experiment and if something sounds nice keep it, if not trash it. For instance, I just love the sound of the F Maj#11 chord (F A C E B), it sounds very Spanish or Mediterranean to me. The easiest way to fret that one would be as an F Major chord except you don't do the bar, in other words, you leave the 1st and 2nd string open (Steve Vai uses this one in his infamous work "For the Love of God").
I'll show you some voicings for these chords and again these are not the only possible ones, I really want to encourage you to look for your own patterns and fingerings since that will dramatically increase your knowledge of the instrument, not to mention that fingerings feel a lot more natural when you have come up with them. Here there are some to get you started:
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
Note that even if you're not planning on writing your own music in the near future, knowing the chords that "come" from the scale (or the scales that come from the chords for that matter depending on what approach you're using) can help you better understand your options when improvising and take you away from the "Ok, here's a dominant chord I'll play X Mixolydian here" kind of thought and helps you use a more melodic approach.
Also, since there are a lot of dissonant intervals inside many of the chords derived of these scales, you'll get out of your traditional harmonization techniques (like parallel 3rds) and get a little taste of how great some of these dissonances can be, especially when using pentatonic scales you will sometimes "be forced" to use different intervals aside from parallel 5ths 4ths or 3rds. Some of these intervals may sound plain ugly to you, but you might even find them useful. (like playing minor 2nds with the keyboard to create a horror scene :) )
Progressions
Here is where the real fun starts and you can take many approaches to this, I generally narrow it down to two that seem to work well for me, one of them is inexact transposition, that is to take a progression that works well in other modes like for instance our good old blues progression (I IV V I) and apply it to the scale, let's try it with a different one though. Let's use the Persian Major Scale, this is a 7 tone scale and you can say it's a Gypsy Scale with a flat 5 (or a Phrygian Dominant with a sharp 7 and a flat 5), so it would be spelled like this:
A Bb C# D Eb F G#
Try getting all the possible triads out of this scale.
And for you shred freaks here are some 3 NPS fingering patterns:
Here's the PowerTab file of the above.
Now let's try to apply this scale to our old blues progression:
I = A Maj7b5 (A C# Eb G#) IV = DmMaj7 ( D F A C#) V=EbMaj7 sus4(E G# Bb D)
Quite interesting chords huh? This example would probably sound unmusical if you just try to stack all the notes together and hold them for 4 beats while you jam over it, but if you try and work around the dissonances something cool will come up, again, it's a matter of taste, some of these chords may be too jazzy for your taste or too dissonant but if that happens, work on them, see what other choices you have, if they sound too jazzy take notes out.
Forgetting about the rules is sometimes ok and sometimes it's great, feel free to remove the "forbidden notes" (3rd, 7th and extension) the keyword here is EXPERIMENT.
Try this approach and see if it works for you, I've used it for a while, in fact I have a whole notebook with progressions like II –VI - V - I ; III – IV - III and so on and whenever I feel uninspired I go back to those and try to use one in one of those scales I'm working on, I usually get something to start on whether I use the progression or not, so it's worth the try.
Another Approach
The other approach I use is very similar to the one I introduced in the first article, limiting yourself, the so called "cell" system (do not confuse this with the CAGED system).
First come up with a motive or a theme (I won't stop to discuss the differences between those two right now but if you really need to know then ask me in the forums :D ). Take your time with that one ‘cause that's going be the center of your song, then vary it a couple of times. Once you're happy with the results harmonize the whole thing using ONLY the scale you chose.
I know this falls more in the reign of composition than it does on improvisation but I believe that in order to be a good improviser you need to develop strong compositional skills (after all, improvisation is nothing more than instant composition), so get those scrolls out and write stuff down, it REALLY helps and it will expand your creativity as well. Once you get this concept down and have experimented a lot, you'll hear fitting musical ideas when jamming and the different approach this will give to your phrasing will increase your options while improvising.
Conclusion
Practicing improvisation is different from practicing technique, and practicing improvisation is a completely different thing from improvising, while practicing you need to do a lot more listening and a lot less playing than when you practice technique. It seems lame but it really helps to limit yourself to four or five notes at a time and work with them to exhaustion, this approach to practicing was widely explained in Eric's "Squeeze it Out" article.
Use your ears and instead of trying to blazing through these scales (and me giving you the 3 NPS may not help on that) stop and listen to the sounds in them, play every note while listening to what you're doing BTW you should do that with all the scales you know including the major and minor scales - you'll find sounds you never knew were there and your phrasing will improve.
Stay tuned for the third part of this article series, I'll show you some more ways to apply these scales to your everyday playing :) . I hope you have enjoyed the trip so far, feel free to explore on your own, ‘because this is a wide world and there's room for everyone' :)
Signing off once again,
Jorge Maldonado