this is part two of our series on pentatonic voicings. it would probably be a good idea
to watch part one first, if you haven't done so already. You can click on this i-card or
just use the link provided in the description
so if I lower the C to a B on a C minor pentatonic it's just a minor pentatonic b1
the cool thing about this scale, is that it offers a tritone, which is not found anywhere
in the minor pentatonic. This will be a great property that we can use to create pentatonic
voicings for dominant chords. You need that tritone, if you want to sound dominant. remember,
the method that we're using to turn these pentatonic scales into voicings, is to play
all five notes in the scale by skipping every other note. so, here's the C minor pentatonic.
we flatten the 1, and we get this scale...
if we use skips, starting on the first degree we get this...
so now, we have a tritone on the left hand, and an Eb major triad on the right hand.
this is a really cool voicing for a G7 chord, and we can use it on many other chords. but
let's not worry about that for now. let's just focus on learning these voicings without any
specific chord in mind. think of them as just voicings, for today, we'll learn how to play
them really well, and make them part of our voicing's vocabulary. so, if we take it for
a ride across all degrees of the scale, we get this... so, this voicing, I think sounds terrible.
I really don't like the sound of this one because this b9 (here), against one of the
notes of the tritone, creates a little too much dissonance for my taste. actually, I think
that's a good rule to follow moving forward. When you have a tritone in your voicing, any
note that's a b9 below a tritone-note, will make the voicing sound completely dissonant.
I try to avoid these voicings in my playing. is the voicing wrong? not really. nothing is
really wrong in music. I just happen to dislike the tension, so I've decided to never use voicings
like that. but hey, that's just me! you let your ears decide what's cool for you or not. I like
to avoid any voicing with any notes that are a b9 below a tritone-note. so here's your practice
session for today's concept. Play the minor pentatonic and then play the same scale but
with a b1
and we're only going to use and practice the voicings that follow our b9 rule: voicings
1, 2 and 4. Play it slowly and pay attention to where the tritone appears in the voicing
now take it for a spin through all keys chromatically
play the first voicing in all keys. notice, and pay attention, to all of the intervals
that you're playing. these are not chords, they're voicings. don't try to put a name to them just
learn the shape
play the voicing starting on the second note
step 5: start on the fourth note
step 6: by the way, this should be your daily challenge (once you've mastered steps 1 through
5). Use a twelve tone row, which is nothing more than all 12 notes in random order without
repeated notes. choose any of the three voicings. use the notes in the row as your bottom note,
and play the same voicing from note to note. we've added tone rows with every voicing in
the PDF. you can use a metronome ,or a drums groove. practice at really slow tempos at first
and then increase the tempo gradually over time. see how far you can take it without making
any mistakes. it's a great practice routine
in our next videos, we'll get into using these voicings in actual
Jazz standards. and later on, we'll look into a couple more pentatonic scales, which are
great for other types of chords like: diminished chords, and so on. thanks again for
watching. all of our members will get a PDF of today's exercise. if you'd like to become
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