Every Scale You Need - with ONE SHAPE

foreign [Music] so i was recently jamming with a friend and i was saying why don't you just improvise something around here and he actually pulled out a load of paper charts with all sorts of scales on it and was like ah but what about the major pentatonic what about the blues scale and all this and i just thought man this is just so complicated so for anyone who's struggling with which scales to play when then this video is for you what i'm going to do is explain in the simplest way i can how all these different concepts of minor major pentatonic and blues all actually fit together quite simply so i've got my guitar i've got my beer let's get into it [Music] so in this video we're going to look at six tonalities minor pentatonic major pentatonic minor blues major blues the natural minor and the full major scale now i know that sounds a lot but we're going to keep it really really simple by learning how we can do it all with one shape the classic a minor pentatonic box to help us understand how all these tonalities fit together the video is going to be broken out into three key concepts so firstly we'll look at how minor and major are actually the same secondly we'll look at how pentatonic and blues are virtually the same and then thirdly we'll look at how those sweet missing notes from the full major and minor scales are actually really easy to find one thing i should just clarify before we move on is the difference between scales and tonalities so for me a scale it's just a sequence of notes the academic or theoretical way of looking at it whereas the tonality is about the color the flavor the feeling that those notes evoke i.e the emotional way of looking at it so whilst there are lots of good reasons to learn scales in this video we're not going to be focusing on scale shapes but rather on tonalities and how we can bring out those colors and flavors so let's get into our first key concept how minor and major are actually the same and i want to start with a listening exercise so in a moment i'm going to play along to the backing track but let me just explain about the backing track first so this is a really simple track i've put together it starts with an a section which has the chords a minor d minor e minor and then back to a minor so this is a 1 4 5 one progression in the key of a minor then we move into a b section which has the chords c f g and back to c so again a one four five one progression but this time in the key of c major now these are probably the most minor sounding and major resounding progressions you can get just using basic chords without any sharps or flats so as i'm playing a couple of things to listen for firstly that it starts darker sounding in the minor key and then brightens as we move into the major key but then notice how i'm playing 95 of the same notes throughout just using that basic a minor pentatonic shape so here we go with the backing track [Music] bye [Music] so to understand how i was able to play the same notes over both a minor and major key let's go right back to basics so a b c d e f g and back to a these are the musical notes with no sharps or flats and together like this they create an a minor scale which has a dark or sad sound now look at the notes below c d e f g a b c these are exactly the same notes just with a different start point and together like this they create a c major scale which has a bright or happy sound so a minor and c major have exactly the same notes although they have the same notes they do have a different home note that is the note that the music's ultimately going to resolve back to so in a minor the home note is obviously a whereas in c major the home note is c now every minor scale has a relative major scale with exactly the same notes for example e minor and g major have exactly the same notes and c sharp minor and e major have exactly the same notes so now let's talk about the pentatonic and what is the pentatonic scale well here's our full a minor scale and now below let's look at the pentatonic by comparison so we keep the a we lose the b we keep the c we keep the d we keep the e and then we lose the f and keep the g so that's our five notes five is in penta the pentatonic scale then of course we can add another a on top the reason this is so useful is that the b and the f are actually the notes that add the most color to the a minor scale so by taking them out while sometimes it can make it sound a little bit more bland it also means we can play over lots of different chords without clashing so that's the theory now let's see how we play it on the guitar [Music] now i'm sure many people watching are already really familiar with that shape but just in case you're not it's five on the low e and then up to eight on the low e five on the a and then seven on the a five on the d seven on the d five on the g seven on the g five on the b string and then eight on the b string and then on the top e five and then eight again so five eight five seven five seven five seven five eight five eight now sometimes people can view this shape as a bit beginnery and there's lots of talk about getting out of the pentatonic box and all that stuff well let me tell you this is one of the most useful shapes you can ever learn and loads of really great music has been made using it so whilst all these notes can be played elsewhere on the guitar neck this is probably the most useful position to know so when we play that pattern on the guitar these are the exact notes we're playing and back to this point about a minor and c major having exactly the same notes well the same is true with the pentatonic scale so if we look firstly we have an octave of the a minor pentatonic and then of course a second octave and we can also play that high c as well as part of the a minor pentatonic now if we look below we also have an octave of the c major pentatonic here and a second octave so for this reason we can use this exact same shape for playing over both a minor and c major now there's two notes in this pattern which i really want to draw your attention to that help us understand how we can use the same shape over both minor and major keys and those two notes are the first note and the second note so this first note here tells us which minor key we can use this pattern over so in this case fifth fret of the e string is an a so obviously we can use it over the key of a minor the second note then three frets up this note here tells us which major key we can use this pattern over so in this case 8th fret of the e string that's for c so exact same shape [Music] we can use over the key of c major now let's look at another couple of examples say you wanted to play in the key of f sharp minor well for a minor key we know it's the first note of the pattern so where's f sharp as the first note that's here at the second fret so same pattern over the key of f sharp minor if for example you wanted to play in b flat major well for a major key we need to think about the second note of the pattern so that's at the sixth fret here is a b flat so with that as our second note [Music] over the key of b flat major so now we understand the same shape can be used for both minor and major keys let's go back to the backing track and i'm firstly going to play with the key of a minor and then i'll come back and let you in on what i'm doing to really make it focus on that a minor sound [Music] so what i was doing there in the key of a minor was resolving a lot of my lines back to the note of a so there's three a's within this pattern first here fifth fret the low e then seventh fret of the d and then again fifth fret of the high e and my first phrase was something like landing on an a and then i play something similar a couple more times and then towards the end land on an a [Music] and then land back on this low a so just by resolving my lines to the a i bring out that minor tonality of this shape now what i'm going to do is play something very very similar in the key of c major and here's what that sounds like [Music] do [Music] so now that was virtually the same thing but in the key of c major and all i did differently to make it sound brighter was resolve my lines back to a c instead of an a so with a minor i played for c i simply played and stayed on that c note at the fifth fret of the g string and then later on instead of landing on the a i played and landed on the c again and then resolving back to the lower c there so by simply changing which note i'm landing on i make it sound much brighter and bring out the major tonality so that's the pentatonic now let's move on to our second key concept that pentatonic and blues are virtually the same so here's our a minor pentatonic scale and all we need to do to turn this into a blues scale is add one note it's an e flat in the middle here now that e flat is our blue note hence i've colored it blue so a minor pentatonic becomes a minor blues now we already know that a minor and c major have the same notes so to create a c major blues scale is exactly the same we simply add an e flat so it's the same notes just a different starting point now that e flat really derives from a c minor scale and that minor over major feel is what gives the blues its characteristic sound so by focusing on that e flat you'll really bring out the blues and you're playing so now we understand the theory of the blues scale let's see how it works on the guitar so back to our a minor pentatonic shape all we need to do is work out where we can put some e flat notes in and around that so the first easy one to get to is here sixth fret of the a string which falls in between the notes we've already got on that string so we already had five and seven so let's add six in as well and then i can start to play things like and immediately you can hear that starts to sound a bit bluesy the other e flat we can really easily add in is here eighth fret on the g string so that's just slightly outside of our shape but we can easily slip over to it like this [Music] and as well as playing it direct i can also bend to it [Music] and so often when people are playing pentatonix they do a little bend like that to bring in that kind of blues feel which is kind of why i say you know the pentatonic and the blue scale are really the same thing and i don't really think of them as anything separate when i'm playing so now let's go back to the backing track i'll play over the key of a minor first and just watch out for every time i hit that note there or do that little bend and you'll hear those bluesy phrases coming in so here we go with the backing track [Music] so what i'm going to do now is play something very very similar in the key of c major so whereas on the a minor example there i was playing something like land on an a and then a little bluesy phrase what i'll do for c major is land on the c same bluesy phrase and in the a minor example i ended with something like using that blue note that e flat on the a string there you know for the c major i'll end on again just touching on that note so here's how that sounds [Music] okay so you might be thinking i can hear some blue notes in there but not quite as bluesy sounding as i might like something like that and that's because there's another technique when we're playing over a major key is to use the minor scale which relates to that same major key so in this case c major we could actually play over that with a c minor scale so in order to find the c minor scale of course where's the c the first note of the pattern that we covered earlier so that's here at the eighth fret and that exact same pentatonic pattern [Music] we can also find the blue notes that go with that [Music] and use that to play over a c major progression for a really bluesy sound the only little tip i give is this note here is particularly clashy so just give that a little bend up and then that really starts sounding like the blues so let's play that over the backing track and see how that sounds [Music] so a very quick word on the theory of why playing a minor over a major key works for blues so if we look at our c major blues scale here we have one blue note the e flat whereas if we look at the c minor blues scale we have three blue notes the e flat the g flat and a b flat and in really simple terms more blue notes equals more blues sound however because we're still rooted in the c as our home note it still feels like it fits over that c major chord progression so now let's move on to our third and final concept that those sweet missing notes are really easy to find so here's the a minor pentatonic scale we've been working with and we're missing two notes from the full a minor scale you'll remember we took them out earlier in the video and those are a b here and an f here now i call these the sweet notes because they're what lends the sweet melodic sound to this scale i've colored them red you can think of them as like sweet little strawberries so with these notes added our a minor pentatonic becomes the full a natural minor scale we've already established multiple times that a minor and c major have exactly the same notes so here is the c major scale with the f and the b added in so that's the theory let's take it to the guitar so now we know we need to find two extra notes a b and an f to complete those full a minor and c major scales let's see where they are on the neck of the guitar using our usual a minor pentatonic shape [Music] so i'm going to start with the f because that's probably easiest to incorporate and we can find that here at the sixth fret on the b string so we've already got the fifth and the eighth on that string so we can just add in the sixth like that and then the b will find at the seventh fret on the high e it's obviously it's also at the seventh fret on the low e but we've already got then the fifth and the eighth there and so we could just incorporate the seventh as well [Music] so bringing in those extra notes i'm now going to play along with the backing track again and then i'll come back and show you what i did to bring them in in a more musical kind of way [Music] i [Music] so to look at what i was doing to incorporate those extra two notes there then so i start with our usual kind of phrase but then i went straight to this hammer on from the fifth fret on the b string up to the sixth which just allows me to bring in that f note here on the sixth fret [Music] and now i'm up to the seventh fret on that top e bringing in that b note and by bringing that in we're bringing a much more monotic sense than normal kind of that's what people playing pentatonic normally sounds like whereas this is a lot more a lot sweeter sounding but then i went to a bluesy sounding lick to end just to show that just because i'm in a very melodic kind of sense here doesn't mean i can't add in the odd blue note to bring that tonality in as well so what i'm going to do now is play the same thing in c major using our usual trick of resolving to the c instead of the a but then when it comes to playing this f note on the sixth fret instead of playing it directly what i'm gonna do is bend the fifth fret to get to it [Music] instead of i'm gonna and that's a way that you can bring in those extra notes without even actually touching on them so here's how that sounds [Music] so now we've covered our three concepts what have we learned well firstly we learned that we can use the same pattern over both minor and major keys for the pentatonic shape we looked at the first note tells us which minor key we can use it over and the second note which major key we can use it over then we looked at how for blues we simply add the blue notes here and here and then we looked at how adding those sweet notes creates the full minor or major scale tonality now if we bring all this together we end up with a shape that looks like this that we can use anywhere on the guitar to create music so that brings us to the end of the video i do hope it was useful and you've got something from it if you've got any questions then leave it in the comments below otherwise i'm now going to close out with some improv over the backing track so as i'm playing look out for a lot of the concepts we've covered in the video and until next time cheers [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Jules Guitar

Views: 1,176,697

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Id: PNkuhOfY9oA

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021