pentatonic

Here's a new post by Jason Ricci on playing the Minor Pentatonic Scale. Soloing Scales are used to guarantee a quality. Use the Major Pentatonic Scale (2 3" 3 4 5+ 6+) to give your soloing a light quality (such as for Jump & Swing Blues and ballads) and use the Minor Pentatonic Scale (2 3' 4+ 4 5 6+) for a dark/bluesy/minor quality. This scale, as well as the Blues Scale (which just adds the flat-5... 2 3' 4+ 4' 4 5 6+), contains no notes that will clash with minor... they are the go-to scales for minor playing. continue reading...

Now that you've dialed in playing up and down the scale, put on a jam track and improvise to it, ONLY playing the notes within the scale. It will be a challenge to stay within the scale, especially for those with more improvising experience (muscle memory will pull you out of the scale, so make sure to choose a moderate tempo jam track). Take mental note as to which notes within the scale sound really, and where, so we can further explore how to choose notes within this scale that will interact well with the three chords of our 12 Bar Blues progression.