What The Heck Are Modes Of The Pentatonic Scale?

hey up guys I had a student back in the '90s and I was teaching them modes and he asked me Ricky you know these modes they all have these weird names do pentatonic boxes have weird names too and I thought you know it actually makes sense that they would have so really when somebody calls a mode ionian we can think of it as major or we can think of aolan as minor so why not The Pentatonics as well for me however the thing is when I I think of modes I think of their scale formula and because pentatonics have scale formulas I can associate specific chords to those scale formulas as well really this is my way of interpreting those scale formulas into pentatonic modes you may have heard other names but this was what makes sense to me and what this does is it unlocks a new way of thinking of how these five pentatonic boxes that we get fit on top of chords first I'll show you the idea of how we modify a major scale into two different scale formulas to give you the gist and then we'll get into The Pentatonics you can generally understand what a mode is by its DNA now what do I mean by its DNA this is why it's important to know your scale formulas there we have the major scale formula you can see it goes root 2 third fourth fifth 6th 7th now it would be simple for me to just change this into lydian by sharpening the fourth let me do that again root 2/3 fourth fifth sixth sth let me flatten the seventh there that equals mixo lydian so now we get a different mode this one was lydian this formula here is going to help us to understand what to call the thing and I had somebody asked me a question Do The Pentatonics have mode names yes they do and there's all sorts of names but I think the best way to see these is as the interval values and we're just going to look at each of of these box patterns not in terms of joining up next to each other in key but as Standalone things and what kind of cords that these guys can work over I'm just going to do these all completely in E shapes here so let me just put those octave patterns in here and you can see there's the e-shaped octave this is going to be another e-shaped octave and we're assuming that this note here is the root note of the scale and because these patterns have all changed then you'll see the intervals that make up each of these scales is going to change as well you can see that it works out all the way across so we can think of each scale in its own right as being a pentatonic scale now you got to remember Penta is five tonic equals turns or notes so five notes that's what a pentatonic is got a cool lesson coming up with pentatonics in the future that you won't want to miss so make sure you hit that subscribe button let's look at the formula for this one and then we can name them later at the top the first note that we have is this root here now the next note up is a flat third going to think about this in intervals this is the root note and this scale degree is going to be the flat third the interval though is the distance between that note and that note so that's the difference between interval and scale degree this scale degree is going to be a flat third we're looking at this next scale degree and the interval between that is going to be a fourth then we get a fifth you can see that's the same as a humble power cord and then get a flat 7even this one here we call this the bog standard minor pentatonic we got that minor pentatonic there what we need to look into here is the notes that are the important notes and first notes that we need are the root the flat third and the fifth those three make up the Triad now the next note that we can add to add color to a cord that would go with this would be the seventh and it happens to be a flat seven so this minor pentatonic works wonderfully with minor 7 chords what we can also do is we can utilize this four here now the four we don't want to think of it as being a four in this context of being cords we wouldn't want to start thinking in suspensions or anything else like that because the third is still present we need to think of this four in its compound value here's a cool way of looking at the compound values two is the same as nine so anytime you see a second you can think of it as being a ninth any any time you see a four that could be an 11 and six could be a 13 if you've not seen my video on compound intervals I'll put a link at the end of this video and you can click on that and watch that as well so here you can see that that four then becomes an 11 so we could get a minor 11 card in there as well guys it's completely up to you how you want to play this so anytime you get those cards come up this is what you're after the next one we have is got a rout a major second so that's a major second there we have a third a fifth and we have a sixth now the cool thing about this one is it's essentially a major scale because it's got a root it's got a major third oh hang on that's a fifth so we got a root we got a third and we got a fifth that is a major Triad so this is telling me what kind of mode that this is going to be so this is a major pentatonic what else have we got here well we've got a two so we can have major and just to say that we could just have straightforward minor as well major we can have major six cords and we can use it with major nine chords now you might be thinking major six hang on Ricky you just said it was 13 there it will work with that as well the two and the nine are interchangeable this is essentially a major nine cord then this is going to be a major pentatonic you could get away with just using those cuz this minor pentatonic this lives on cords 2 three and six this lives on cords 1 four and five but you're going to find that that's a bit Bland let's move on to the next scale we got a root second fourth fifth flat 7 so what we've got root second fourth fifth flat 7even but there's something going on there the lack of third remember with these two Roots flat third fifth root third fifth here root fifth the third is gone we have no third at all in this scale which is interesting because the third gives us an emotional sound but what we can do is look at the third here the third going up we can get a sus four the third going down we can get a sus two so the third is like the pendulum and it swings towards sus two or sus four and that can be the same for the flat third as well cuz minor cords suspend as well here you can see that wonderfully we get both of those there with this flat 7even that's an interesting color that we're going to add to that the flat 7 in my mind I'm thinking that's either going to be a minor sound or a dominant sound sort of a bluesy deal going on there it's not going to be a relaxing sound the second and the fourth give you an ambiguous sound so essentially I'm going to call this suspended pentatonic flat 7 I have heard of this being called the Egyptian scale before but I don't think calling it something like that gives you an idea of what cords it goes with cuz we need to understand the degrees of the scale and how they work with the notes of cords so the way we can think of this is this can work with suspended cords can work with sus two sus four cords but you can also have these flat sevens in here as well so sometimes you will get a dominant with a sus 4 so sus 2 sus 4 it's completely up to you what you want to do because the third is emitted that's the thing you have to take care of if you want to keep the sound of this scale in its own right so you would play a Susu chord or a sus four cord and you could play this scale over the top of it the next one that we have we've got the root flat third fourth we've got this interval here we can think of it as being a sharp five or a flat six in the case of it being a flat six then we can apply different Theory knowledge to this it's also got a flat 7even which is a feature of Minor 7 chords and also dominant chords if you've got a dominant chord and you want to put a sharp five in there you're going to get an augmented sound and that is really desirable but then the flat three comes along and stuffs that up but this is the beauty of this it's going to sound a little bit outside a little bit vague and in that case here's how I would look at this cuz it's got that flat third there I would think of this as being a minor pentatonic but we got to think about that sharp five or that flat six now because the natural minor scale is the roote second flat third fourth flat six flat 7 then I would lean towards calling this a minor pentatonic flat six six mode and that's a good way of looking at it because it's telling you what it's made of telling you what's in the tin so the next one here we've got a root second fourth fifth and then we get a sixth I think that's really interesting that it isn't a flat seven cuz if you remember we had a root second fourth fifth then we get the flat 7even in this instance we're getting the root 2 fourth fifth 6 this one looks very very similar to this one here however before we jump the gun we've got a route we've got a fifth we have no third so really this is a suspended pentatonic that's what I think of it you can think of it as something else okay the scale police might be along here but remember guys this is what it's all about associating it with cords if these intervals here exist with in the scale then they're going to have a chord as well because of this thing that I call chord scale arpegio those are the only three elements of pitch that we have chords scales and arpeggios they're all the same this is what I talk about things being synonyms so we got root second fourth fifth six the thing about this is if the third was in there it would look more like a major scale so I kind of think of it as being that but I would still call this a suspended pentatonic because of that major six there I'd think of it more as being a sus four pentatonic so that's how I think of those modes there guys and you can see what cords could you do with these you're going to use it with sus cords sus two sus four we've got that route we got the fifth we've got the sixth in there so you could use those as well cuz remember this two this four and this six they can become these equivalent also so if you have chords that have got a root a fifth and then you've got a 9th 11th and a 13th you could think of it as those but you are going to need to put extra color in there of the seventh and that third in there to really define whether it's a major or a minor tonality to extend those cords into those compound values it's very vague that's the thing about suspended sound it is is the vague sound go hell for leather with these guys you will enjoy playing them I would definitely play this over major six cards so major six card comes along I would probably play that pattern on top of it it's just a nice one to play it's a finger friendly pattern that is the pentatonic modes guys they don't have any strange names like lydian Mixel lydian or frian or anything else like that there's a great little website called ulo go on there and build some cords based on these scale degrees see what you come up with and play the scale over the top and you'll have a lot of fun doing that and that's the main thing at the end of the day [Music] guys

Channel: Ricky Comiskey

Views: 3,835

Keywords: pentatonic scale, pentatonic modes, pentatonic guitar lesson, music theory, pentatonic scales guitar, minor pentatonic, major pentatonic

Id: IAgv3KE9s2w

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024