Getting out of a pentatonic rut

DesVegas

Very useful

axisus

Must remember to check this out ....

not_the_dj

Book marked for later....I've been comfy in that rut for years!

DesVegas

A five sided rut : )

frankus

Freedom is being free of the need to be free - Maggotbrain

Nowt wrong with the pentatonic - it's just the beginning of everything else

DesVegas

@frankus i know that, however there is a problem (my problem) of just scrolling up and down the scale .. this breaks it up nicely with melody and grace.

GuyBoden

Using Pentatonics can be very rewarding, stimulating and very complex.

Try a search for this book:

Phil_aka_Pip

frankus said:

Freedom is being free of the need to be free - Maggotbrain

Nowt wrong with the pentatonic - it's just the beginning of everything else

It is if that's where you start. I was harmonising major scales in triads at the age of 10, hearing at the age of 15 that the bluesy music I'd just started listening to often sounded minor, and at the age of 25 still wondering why harmonic minor scales didn't fit bluesy music and then discovering that natural minor scales were not nearly as bad but still had notes in them that nobody else was using. It must have been some time later that I discovered minor pentatonics (Thank you, Ralph Denyer, for the Guitar Handbook)

frankus

I think pentatonics is a bit like learning end-games in Chess. It's a simplification of the game but it really usefully declutters the thing to get at understanding.

So if you've played Chess all your life, learning end-games or maybe just focussing on back-rank mates is probably going to help your game.

I don't really hold  with this notion of pentatonics and the Blues ... blues is chord tones. The pentatonic fits because one root scale works over all the chords of a 12 bar. That's a buskers guide rather than a reason,

It might be that speaking in terms of progressions, blues comes from gospel and gospel comes from American church music which comes from Scottish Presbyterians who wrote stuff using the pentatonic,

There's loads of ways up the mountain - I don't think it pays to be too precious about which approach I use, your  approach clearly works for you, I'm not sure I've ever stuck at any one long enough to know

PC_Dave

I used to think the pentatonic was holding my playing back until I found the CAGED method and then stopped thinking about what I was playing and just started listening to as many different players and "borrowed" certain phrases and licks.

I'm still shite, but happier with my phrasing and what comes from the fingers.

ElectroDan

I just learned to mingle major and minor, and what notes sounded cool to add in. So I still think Pentatonic fundamentally but it weaves through enough twists and turns to not sound too rigid.