How To Play The Dorian Scale On Guitar And When To Use It

[Music] hey there Griff Hamlin here from blues guitar leashed welcome thanks for joining me in this video I want to talk to you about something that's not specifically blues related you might call it bluesy for example the tune deja voodoo by Kenny Wayne Shepherd is an example of this chord progression I always kind of think of it in relationship to things like oh yay komova by Santana which again I realize is not blues but a lot of people might call it bluesy at times this sound the dorian sound and the kind of the chord progression that goes with it i hear it a lot in I'll say jam music I'm not a huge Grateful Dead listener but in times that I have taught material from the Grateful Dead over the years I've seen this sound pop up a lot so I don't want to speak too much to that but for sure like I say the Santana type of stuff it also works really great in like a blues rock context i find the dorian sound comes up a lot Joe Bonamassa carry more you know a lot of those guys that have maybe a little bit more technique and and need a few more notes the dorian makes a good choice for that so what i'm gonna do is kind of walk you through the sound kind of show you how it how it pairs up with the minor pentatonic and the blues notes which is kind of cool and then a little bit about how to a little bit about how to use it over this particular progression so the sound itself assuming that we're starting on an a and why not it's as good as any other note we like a it's a happy note so we're gonna go kind of you can probably even see the a minor pentatonic in here but we're gonna go a b c so keep in mind that the dorian sound is the second mode of the major scale so this is gonna have all of the same notes as g major but a is going to be the most important so that's really the main thing that you need to keep in mind you want to what you want to look at this from an a perspective in other words a is your most of your most important note so ABC 5 7 8 DNA e 5 & 7 on the fifth string F sharp and G and a 4 5 & 7 on the 4th string BC T 4 5 & 7 on the 3rd string F sharp and G 5 7 & 8 on the second string that's where it would end but still in position we can grab a B and a C so that's 5 7 & 8 on the first ring eight seven five eight seven five seven five four seven five four seven five seven five for me it's easier to remember it by fingering 1 3 4 1 3 little shift 2 sets of one to four and then one okay so it's a fairly straightforward sound they can probably notice right then if we take a minor pentatonic we see that it looks kind of really similar the a is shared between both the B is only in the dorian the C is in both the D is in both the E is in both the f-sharp is only in the dorian the g is in both knees and both b is only in the dorian CD or both yes both that sharp is only in the dorian G is in both a is in both so if you are theoretically inclined the dorian scale is a pentatonic minor with an added two and six that's another way to look at it okay similarly if you want to add in the flat 5 [Music] you can most definitely do that [Music] and of course what you want to do to make this sound come out right if you think about it okay there's only two notes that are different between a minor pentatonic and Andorian so if I play minor pentatonic notes let's say I only play the AC D E and G but in my mind I'm thinking oh this is this historian maybe you think that but nobody's going to hear that because it sounds like minor pentatonic so you want to make sure that when you play the Dorian that you take advantage of these notes that are different because if you don't take advantage of those notes that are different it's just gonna sound like a minor pentatonic skill five sevenths of it is the minor pentatonic scale so make sure you take advantage of those does what's really not gonna do much now there are of course gobs and gobs and gobs of chord progressions that one could use this scale over but the one that seems to come up a lot is like and this is what I call a 2/5 progression even though we're gonna say that this a minor is the one it's gonna act like a - don't worry about it if you've got a minor chord and you got the dominant 7th chord or a major chord a 4th above it meaning the root is on the very next string that's the interval of a fourth one two three four right so if we go from a minor to d7 that's a perfect candidate for the dorian sound G minor tc7 it would be G Dorian C minor 10 F seven would be a C Dorian okay so in our case we'll do a minor seven you can play an a minor seven however you like I'm gonna use a d9 because I just like that sound so I'll let me bring turn off my overdrive here or I'll just back off that a little bit I'm just gonna put a nice little easy kind of Santana you thing into my looper [Music] okay and now I can use the scale [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] I notice how I switched into the minor pentatonic and it sounds good or I can use the door in [Music] you can go back and forth between them all if you like and right there's no that's kind of the nice thing about this is you can you can really mix and match so you may only know the Dorian in the one position fine no problem switch over to minor pentatonic if you want to get out of that position it's just a really really nice sound now one more little thing that I'll suggest to you that you that you practice on a lot of people practice scales up and down right first of all practice the entire range of the position you're in but start at the top [Music] but come back to the to the root [Music] right start from this a up here and that's gonna give you the sound in a more I'll say natural normal soloing type of context right solos don't usually start down here they start up here okay and that's a really cool thing another thing that you might want to play with is an idea called broken thirds and broken thirds are a great way to break up your scales when you have a lot of notes it doesn't really work for a pentatonic scale but it really works for a diatonic and I call it leap frogging I'm gonna play the first note and then I'm gonna skip a note and go down to the next note so in our case then I'm gonna go to the note that I skipped go to the note below that and then um below that so basically I play every note then I skip one then I play the next note then I go back to the note that I skip then I skip one then I play the next note I go back to the note that I skipped then I skip one then I go to the note that I skip the nice then I go back then I skip one and I go back to the notes that I skip skip one go back to the note that I skipped skip one right believe it or not that really it's a it's a really nice melodic device it's a really nice way to create a sound that that's it's got all of the the notes in the scale it's got the sound of the scale but it doesn't just sound like you're playing a scale or hey it's not just you know playing down the scale it just sounds a lot hipper and a lot cooler when you do like some broken throws or something okay so that is the Dorian sound something to play along play around with hopefully you'll kind of digging on it I do have a course called modes unleashed if you want to learn more about modes there's of course seven of them because there's seven notes and a major scale so that's the way they work but I'll try and leave a link to this video in case you're interested in more about the modes unleashed and as always if you have a friend that would dig this video feel free to share it with them and I'm Griff Hanlon from blues guitar leashed I will talk to you soon take care

Channel: Blues Guitar Unleashed

Views: 26,066

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Id: kvkWZoyhf6c

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020