scales for improvising

[mickp]

Minor pentatonic or blues scale over major chords for blues songs and many rock songs...

When do you use major pentatonic scales ??
Just whenever you want or what ??

[SpooN]

I don’t know what some of the other players here think but I like to think of improvising more along the lines of what chords you are playing over then what scale to use.

So work out the notes in the chords you are playing over then find a scale that suits them best or manufacture a scale yourself to suit the chords.

[robsm]

The only question that demands an answer is:

'How does it sound'?

Try everything and anything.

To take a first step with pentonic scales try fooling about with this idea.

Just say the chord over which you're playing is...well....
Cmaj7...

The chord tones are : C E G B
The C pentonic is C D E G A...can we take it as a given that it works? OK!!

Well now to take another step 'out' the notes in the G pentonic Scale are G A B D E so you can see even on paper that over Cmaj7 it would work to use the G pentonic Scale because there are enough 'in' notes.

Going further 'out' extend the C maj7 chord to the limit and the notes (chord tones & tensions) are:

C E G B D F# A

So looking at the pentonic scale of D the notes are:

D E F# A B

So while the F# will make you blink for a while try using the D pentonic for little parts of solos over Cmaj 7

In summary for major chords you can safely used the pentonic scales of the I II & V chords of the scale. Note with the V chord I mean the pentonic of the V major chord not the dominant 7.

For pentonics to use over Minor and dominant chords the way to work them out is the same but the 'answers' are different.

Have fun!!

As I said this is a first step and certainly not the anser to everything.

RobSm

[Archangelis]

personally i like to improvise chords over scales as you can get some really wierd and wonderful sounds from them.

the best i found is dimished chords over any whole tone scale they sound hell good