Welcome to Get Your Sax Together, I'm pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson. If you
are playing anything in the pop, funk, soul or rock and roll genre you're gonna
need to know about one important scale - and that is the pentatonic scale. So what
is the pentatonic scale? Let's get straight into it!
The easiest way to
explain it is it's a five note scale which is a major scale without the
fourth and seventh notes. So in other words, it's the first, second, third, fifth
and sixth notes of a major scale and it sounds like this...
As you probably know, there are 12 keys in music so make sure that you take the
time to get very familiar with that pentatonic scale in 12 keys. Once you've
done that that equips you to play almost any song you like in the pop, soul, funk
rock and roll genre, even if you're a complete beginner on sax. If you want a
shortcut with the notes for these Pentatonics go down into the description
of this video, click the link and you can get your free pdf, where I've
written out all the pentatonics in major and minor and the bluesy variations.
Before we move on I'll quickly explain about the major and minor versions of the
pentatonic. Now there's no difference in the scale. The only difference is what
note you start on. So let's say, for example, we're playing C major pentatonic
C D E G and A. If you want to play that same scale but the minor version you go
to A minor, which is three semitones down from C, and then you play the same scale
starting on A, so that would be A C D E and G. So depending if you're in a major
key or if you're in a minor key that will make a difference to which
pentatonic you use. So make sure you get familiar with the major keys and their
relative minors. Now just remember a relative minor is always three semitones
beneath its major relative. Let's try and clear it up with a very quick example.
Let's say that you've worked out the song that you're playing is in G minor.
You would go up three semitones which is B flat and you're gonna use a B flat
pentatonic. However, because it's in G minor you start on a G.
The other very important thing you need to know about pentatonics is how to add the bonus notes
which are called the "blue notes" and this adds the real bluesiness to the scale. So
when you're doing a minor pentatonic, let's say we're doing A minor pentatonic,
A C D E and G, what we do is we add in an E flat between the E and the D and
that's called the Blues note. Now what that does is that transforms the
pentatonic scale into what's called a "blues scale". So here's what that scale
sounds like
That is going to give you all those classic blues phrases from the great
players, but beware, don't linger on that flattened 5th note for too long because it
will really clash with the chords so use it sparingly and then come off it on to
other notes quite quickly, otherwise it'll be a bit jarring. Here's a quick
example of me using the blues scale which is the minor pentatonic with the extra
flat note, the flattened fifth note, here's a quick example of what the blues scale sounds like...
Now when it comes to the major pentatonic in a major key what we
tend to do is swap out the major third. So let's say we're in C major, C D E G A
are the notes of the C major pentatonic, we take the E and we make it an E-flat,
which you'll notice is the same blues note as the A minor blues scale. So
what we're going to do is have the scale now C D Eb G and A, and that gives us
a bluesy pentatonic for the major key. But just like the minor one, the blues
scale, don't linger on that flattened third, that bluesy note, for too long. So
here's what that pentatonic sounds like in a major key with the blues note
replacing the third here's what it sounds like...
Now commonly what happens is that you can mix and match. You can use the major
third, so if you were in C major you could use an E, OR, you can replace it
with the minor third, which would be E-flat and you can mix and match depending
what phrase you're playing. So I'm going to do a quick demo of a C major thing.
Remember I'm on tenor, it'll be a different transposition for Alto, I'm just going to
play in C on tenor, concert b-flat, and I'm going to mix and match the major 3rd
on the pentatonic and the minor 3rd. So here's what that sounds like...
Ok you've learned the notes, you know what the notes are, but how do you start sounding
good on these pentatonics? How do you start practicing it? Well, first of all, I've
done a great video called "3 tips to sound better when you're soloing" that'll
be linked to a card. It's not there is it, probably be up there (lol), that'll be linked to a
card, so go and check out that video and at the end of that video there's a 15
minute backing track, jam track, that you can practice playing along to and you
can use one pentatonic for the whole thing, so that's a great resource for
practicing. However, the number one thing you can do to get better with your
pentatonics is to transcribe the great players such as the ones behind me on
the sax Wall of Fame. I'll link up there to my three part series on learning how
to transcribe, but that is the number one thing that you can do to learn to get
better at pentatonics. Choose a minor one, choose a major one, and soon you'll learn
what notes sound really great by listening to the great players. And also
don't forget go and check out my Hall of Fame series because there is a bunch of
transcribed solos there for you to learn the classic sax breaks, many of which are
almost completely pentatonic.
That's all we've got time for this week. You have
learned what the pentatonic scale is, what the notes are, when to use the minor
version how to use the bluesy versions and I've taught you that the best way of
learning it is to go and listen to some players and transcribe their solos. Hope
you enjoyed the content, I'll be back next week. Remember to subscribe to the
channel, click the bell to be notified when I upload new videos and of course go down
into the description, click the link to get your free PDF, where I've written out
every pentatonic scale, all twelve pentatonics, major and minor versions and
the blues scale versions. So that's a great resource, go down there, grab that and I
look forward to seeing you next week on Get Your Sax Together. Keep practicing,
see ya later!