need pentatonic help

[wsaraceni]

i was thinking i want to increase my pentatonic playing before i move on to more advanced stuff. i was hoping if anyone has a chance, post a short riff in pentatonic scales. i figure if i learn a few new riffs it might get me thinking a little differently. what do you think?

[PaulO]

Just a thought. I have played pentatonic scales and they sound nothing like what I hear on training video tapes or live. It seems like the reason is good players play them so fast that - the notes kind of blur and sound great.

I found scales are just notes that go together.

I have bought all kinds of videos and watch someone play a pentatonic scale slowly and say to my self "ok I can do that" .... and then comes the part in the video where the presenter says "ok lets put a 12 bar blues accompaniment behind and play along". Before you know it, the presenter is playing all over the neck at what looks to me like nothing like the pentatonic scales just demonstrated. That is so frustrating.

I bought so many books and videos its not funny and I don't know much more than when I started. I guess personal lessons is the way to go.

[Kent S.]

i was thinking i want to increase my pentatonic playing before i move on to more advanced stuff. i was hoping if anyone has a chance, post a short riff in pentatonic scales. i figure if i learn a few new riffs it might get me thinking a little differently. what do you think?
Something you may want to do is incorporate what you already do now, but approach it differently ... say take your major pentatonic and your minor pentatonic ... take a lick and if it's in say the minor pentatonic rooted on the findex finger (i), can the position and root the same scale on the fourth finger
(p). You know have the same scale but the notes are assigned to different strings, forcing you to change your physical playing technique.
That's straight picking, and try to nail all of the original accents. Then if you take whatever articulations the original had (slurring, slides, bends, taps, harmonics ), you can assign those differently than they were in the original,thus changing the feel (kinda hard to hammer-on/pull-off from two separate strings ... you'll have to pick those, but you can incorporate the hammer-on/pull-off on other notes in the lick ... if you see what I mean).
Food for thought, also scale practice in other intervals beside consecutive seconds ... For scale ideas, try taking an incorporating the altered tones of say the blues scale, or harmonic minor, but making them pentatonic ... also you can work your modes and approach them from a pentatonic perspective as well, skipping the notes that will give you the same grouping of the pentatonics (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 ... Major Pentatonic; 1, b3, 4, 5, b7 ... Minor Pentatonic ). Just some ideas for you to work on, it's always better to expand on what you do naturally, but influence from others is good too.
:cool:

[Zach Trowbridge]

Do you know the 5 modes that expand the pentatonics? That's probably the best place to start. If not, you can figure it out yourself. Just figure out the 5 notes that the key you're playing in is made up of, and then transpose them so that the root note is on a seperate string for each one (i.e. once for the root on the low and high e, once for the a, once for the d, etc.). I learned them first in the key of A minor and then would randomly select a minor key and practice it that way.

[PaulO]

Ok sounds like a good plan ..... thanks a bunch !!