Chords for Improve your pentatonic playing with just 3 notes!

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Hey, Craig from Bass Lessons Melbourne here.
Thanks for checking out this video.
Today
I'm going to talk about the minor pentatonic scale and a bunch of different ways that we
can expand on that and spice up our groove playing within that kind of context.
So, there's
about four or five different variations of the minor pentatonic scale I'm going to go
through.
There's PDFs available for download for free from BassLessonsMelbourne.com so
you can go and grab those and follow what I'm doing with that.
Alright, so for those
of you who don't know, the minor pentatonic scale sounds like this.
I'm going to do it
in the key of A today.
So we've got A, _ C, D, E, _ G and then A. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ So _ _ it's used in all kinds
of music from rock, funk, pop, jazz, soul, R&B, it's everywhere.
So it's a really handy
scale to use.
But what a lot of players find is that they get stuck within that little
_ box area and I've had a lot of students ask, you know, what can I do to change up my playing?
How can I spice it up a little?
So, the first way that we can do that is just by expanding
the zone that we're playing in on the fingerboard.
So not taking it over two octaves but just
within a comfortable range on the bass we can look at what notes are available within
that scale.
_ So we've got the second note of the scale is a C which also occurs on the
third fret on the A string.
So now that we're in this area we can go, okay, what else is
nearby that we can maybe access that's part of the A minor pentatonic?
And directly below
that on the E string we've got the G which is the seventh of the scale.
So we've got
G, A and C right there. _ _
_ _ Now from here what we can do is we can continue on up the scale
[Am] so we get A, [D] C, [Em] D and E. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ So just by using those same notes but expanding them over the
fretboard a little bit we get a lot more notes [Am] to choose from. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ [C]
Alright, so that's your starting
point if you like.
Now the first variation, the first note that we can add and we're only
going to add three notes to this scale over the course of this video.
So the first note
that we can add is the flattened fifth.
And by adding the flattened fifth we get a new
scale which a lot of people call the blues scale which sounds like this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[D#] _ _ [E] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ So normally
our fifth is an E, well not normally, all the time in the key of A it's an E.
So a flattened
fifth gives us an E flat _ _ which gives us that kind of really, you know, identifiable blues
sound.
So I'm just going to play a little bit and use just the flattened fifth for fills
and stuff.
So here we go. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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[A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ So yeah, you can hear the sound of it anyway.
Alright, the
next thing that we can do is we can add in a major third in the scale.
So normally we've
got A, C which is the minor third and what we can do is we can add in a C sharp which
gives us a major third.
Now in the context of playing it as a scale it doesn't sound
that great.
We get this.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ It sounds a little bit weird.
But what's really popular to do
and a cool little trick is to just quickly go from the minor third to the major third
and then resolve back to another note.
So we get this kind of sound.
[D] _ _ _ Right, _ _ _
[Am] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
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so that
was just me using the major third.
So we've got the flat five, the blues, the blue note.
We've got the major third and the minor third together.
And then the last one that we can
add in is the major sixth.
So in A this would give us an F sharp.
So we get this kind of
sound.
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_ _ _ _ _ Now again in the context of playing it as a scale it doesn't sound that great.
But it's a really cool flavour to add.
It gives us a bit of that kind of classic funk
feel.
So yeah, it sounds like this. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ So just by adding those three notes [F#] and expanding
the range, the zone that we're playing in, we have so many more options [C] to choose from.
So instead of just having this, _ _ _ we end up with this. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [D#] _ [E] _ _
_ So yeah, that's pretty much it
for this lesson.
Like I said there's PDFs on Basslessonsmelbourne.com if you want to
download those.
Let me know what you think.
Any questions, shoot me a message.
I hope
you enjoyed it.
I'm going to take you out with a little groove and I'm going to use
all the notes, all the scales that we just talked about, various different fills and
stuff just to show you what's possible.
So I hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next time. _ _ _ _ _ _
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[F#] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _