You Make It Sound So Easy and Perfect

Well it’s not that easy, but it’s not that hard either: Learn the 12 pentatonic scales (not too bad, they only have five notes each) and learn the 12 blues scales (starts on the minor, adds a note), and learn which ones to play for each key or chord.  You only need to learn a couple to start jamming.

It’s certainly not a perfect system. In this section I note the places where a pentatonic scale doesn’t quite work.  Rather than being a problem, let’s treat these as opportunities to learn and grow.

Dominant chords. As discussed above, I find the options for the dominant seventh chord to be suboptimal.  If you play C blues over C7, you nicely get the minor seventh (Bb) in both, but you get the minor third in the scale  (Eb) against the major third of the chord (E).  This turns it into blues, which often isn’t appropriate.

Over C7 (perhaps about to resolve to F) the “R+7 blues” advice is to play G blues, basically Bb major pentatonic.  It’s OK, but it has the 4th of the C (F, not in the chord) and doesn’t have the third of the C (E, in the chord).  I sometimes play a modified C pentatonic, C dominant pentatonic, where instead of the sixth (A) I play the Bb (the minor seventh, the 7 in the dominant C7). This modification is really just the notes in a C9 dominant chord. Since I know my 9th chords in most of the keys, I can usually conjure that up.   

The usual jazz advice for dominant chords is to play in the Mixolydian mode, i.e. treat C7 as if C was the 5th scale degree, so play notes from F major.   This would be the combination of Bb majpent and C majpent.

Sometimes I just add the seventh to the major pentatonic to solo over the 7 chord.  Sometimes I add the seventh to the bluesy scale, which adds in the minor third.  The result is a seven note blues scale based on the major pentatonic, different than the six note scale based on the minor pentatonic we’ve been using.  Over C7 the scale would be: C D Eb E G  A Bb.  

This seven note blues scale contains the 7#9 chord, also known as the Hendrix chord.  Think Foxy Lady, but also Taxman (Beatles).  D7#9 is also the second to last chord in Breathe before it returns to the Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression.  [I often see mistakes in charts for the B part (“long you’ll live...”), so as a public service, I give you the correct progression: Cmaj7 Bm7 Fmaj7 G D7#9 D#dim7, and returns back to the A-part: Emadd2 A.]   The #9 is really the minor third, so the Hendrix chord has the major third, minor seventh and minor third in it.  C7#9 is usually voiced like this: C in the bass, E Bb Eb above.   (I called the #9 Eb here to emphasize it’s the minor third).  

Leave out the root and play the jazzy rootless voicing (E Bb Eb) with your left hand.  That same rootless voicing appeared in jazz long before Hendrix got to it, often with the tritone as the root, making it F#13 or Gb13.  This rootless voicing (minor seventh, major third, major sixth) is probably the most common way to play a dominant seventh chord in a jazz piano context.  Viewed as a Gb7 chord, E (more properly, but more obscurely, called Fb here) is the minor seventh, Bb is the major third and Eb is the sixth, aka the thirteenth.

I mentioned Emadd2 .  When you add 2 to a minor chord, that’s outside the pentatonic scale, but it’s still a Pink Floyd staple: think Breathe and Comfortably Numb.  It’s a minor ninth chord without the minor seventh.  It has a special sound all its own.

Diminished and Augmented.  The pentatonic doesn’t work that great for diminished or augmented chords either (the dominant seventh has a diminished chord embedded, which is why the pentatonic isn’t ideal for it either.)   In general, the tones of the pentatonic will be the most consonant.  You don’t want your music to always sound consonant -- a little dissonance is needed to spice things up.  The tritone in the blues scale helps here, but there is plenty of interesting music beyond the pentatonic and blues scales.  Like I’ve hinted at above, you can think of major scales and modes as the combination of a pair of pentatonics.  That’s just one possible jumping-off point to expand your playing beyond the simple pentatonic and blues scales.

Next: That’s a lot of information. Now what?