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Jack here, Jbf music and guitar lessons, as you’ve probably guessed this tutorial is
about the Phrygian Dominant, in this case, E- I started and ended each bar on an E, to
help highlight where the Root note of our scale is. This lesson is ties in with my Malmsteen
signature licks, which I’ll link to up there when it’s live. I used quite a few different
scale shapes there; to show how you can navigate the fretboard. This is a new thing I’m trying
out, so please let me know in those comments if it’s useful, leave a like; or indeed
dislike and negative comment, if you didn’t like it! In fact if you could check out my
community tab and vote in this poll: That would be really helpful. Oh yeah if you’re
like the channel, or your new here click sub scribe and enable notifcations to stay updated
with the channel; house keeping ouf of the way, haha!
And so here I’m going to elaborate on this scale a bit more; talking about how to tackle
memorising it, why it’s good to know different shapes, it’s notes, where it comes from,
which chords; or backing this scale would typically be used over, what are the safe
and less safe notes, then finally some practical applications for using the scale. I’ll put
timestamps in the comments and video description to jump to any of the topics I’ll be addressing.
First off, it can all be a bit daunting trying to remember this sort of thing in one go,
so I’d suggest breaking it down in to smaller sections. Then look for patterns. Ideally
learn some licks in these different patterns; like in my how to break out of boxes tutorial,
card up there. The most effective way of doing this; for me; is to break it down in to one
octave- and that’s what these bars here are. Because with guitar we can play the same
note in several positions; unlike, say Piano, where it’s much more linear; there are a
lager variety of ways in which we can play the same note values. It’s great in some
ways, and a huge pain in other, if like myself your memory takes a while to digest this sort
of thing! What’s going on here, is we’re essentially moving the scale from being played
in the direction, to going this way. Hopefully that will make a bit more sense as we go on.
In bar 1
Cool, and bar 2, I’m just really moving this note up here
bar 3 has this fingering You could still play the higher E on the B string, is you wanted
And bar 4 So, hopefully you get what I meant about moving the scale this sort of way. And
bar 5 I prefer bars 4 and 5, they just click with me better in terms of being easy to both
play and remember.
The benefit of knowing these other shapes comes in firstly when improvising, say we
were doing this And ended up here instead of panicking, we can just use a different
fingering. The other benefit, is that as you get more familiar with the full scale; like
I played through at the start there; you’ll start to see these smaller octave shapes pop
up and hopefully realise that all the scale is, is a collection of these shape spread
all over the fretboard. Where this gets a bit confusing is when the B string comes in
to play. Because it’s tuned form the 4th fret, all the shapes need to be bumped up
by a semi tone,
for example if I start with an E on the D string and use the shape from the last bar
You’ll notice I needed to adjust the fingering to compensate for the B string. So, if you’re
looking for further study, why not try doing what I’ve done here, with these 5 bars,
but make sure the shape goes through the B string.
Ok, the notes are E, F, G#, A, B, C, D, E: from here on I’ll be using that scale diagram
there; hopefully some of the shapes we just looked at will pop out to you a little bit
more now! In terms of the intervals; we have the Root, b2nd, major 3rd, 4th, 5th, b6th,
b7th then back to the root. Which, if I’ve done this right should have magically appeared
on that scale diagram! I find it really useful to think in intervals; if you’re new to
it, it’s something I’d suggest spending a bit of time with; see how it sits with you.
Check out my interval mapping lesson for more on that; card up there. For those of you who
prefer to think in tones, it goes; semi tone, tone and a half, semi tone, tone, semi tone,
tone, tone. It comes from the Harmonic Minor, being it’s 5th mode. Without going too far
down the rabbit hole “Mode” is a fancy way of saying where the scale starts and ends.
So, in this example A harmonic minor has the notes; A, B, C, D, E, F, G#, A and if we go
to the 5th note, E, and build a scale an octave long we get; E, F, G#, A, B, C, D, E; E Phrygian
Dominant , which is why it can be said to be the 5th mode of the Harmonic minor. Take
the harmonic minor, go to the 5th note, build a scale starting and ending on that note;
it’s that simple. Typically when building a chord from a scale we take a note then skip
one, take a note, skip one and take a note. So, let’s do that here. E take, F skip,
G# take, A skip, B take. Alright, you might recognise this one , it’s an E Major chord;
maybe a bit counterintuitive for what tends to be a pretty metal sound! However, when
we start extending the chord to a 7th or even a 9th it gets a bit darker. How do we do this?
The same take, skip method. We had gotten to B; that was the last note we took from
the scale, so let skip C, take D; Which gives us a Dominant 7 chord . And if we go on from
D, lets skip E and, hmm have we run out of notes? Nope, since we’ve completed our octave
just continue the octave higher, which gives us an F. This interval is called a flat 9;
being the flat 2nd, but up an octave. This chord is called a Dominant 7 flat 9. Now,
typically this is where this scale would be used; over a Dominant 7, or dom7 b9; or Diminished
7th (a diminished 7th is hiding inside a dom7 b9, but I’m not going to dive too deep in
the theory there); I mean you can use it over a major triad, but unless it’s implying
a dom7, it might sound a bit off.
In metal, it would be used over a Phrygian riff, or a Phrygian Dominant riff; you know
the kind, lots of 0s lots of 1s; think Metallica, think evil! With this new chord knowledge
we can deduce the safest notes are the: root, 3rd, and 5th. Often referred to as “chord
tones”. After this the b7th; which come from a dom7 chord, will sound the most stable.
Then probably the 4th, b6th and b2nd; I’d say in that order although this is a bit subjective.
If we have an E in the background we can play each of these notes and feel the tension,
or lack thereof. And here’s that drone, for you to try the notes over.
Hopefully you could feel that the 4th, b6th and b2nd felt less stable and wanted to move
somewhere. Where did they want to move? Well, all of them wanted to move down by a semi
tone. The 4th down to the 3rd. The b6th to the 5th and the b2nd down to the root. What’s
really cool about this; well I think it’s cool, which is probably more a judgment on
me than anything else, haha! Is that bending the Root, 3rd, or 5th up by a semitone will
create a really good bit of tension, which is resolved in the most simple of ways by
releasing the bend; super easy, barely an inconvenience, referencing things is tight!
In particular, being able to add this sort of spice from a chord tone and safely get
back to said chord tone just really appeals to me. It’s always just a semi tone and
un-bending it gives us a safe note. Brilliant. Ok, so final bit here; and if you’ve stuck
it out this long and you’re not subscribed, you might as well give that a click; some
practical applications. If you want the neoclassical; or indeed classical sound; try using things
like sequences in it; for more on sequences check out this Malmsteen tutorial, lesson
car up there; but yeah we could go down through it in 3rds; pretty much that take, skip one
thing
Or
taking a note grouping like this through the scale
We can get a much more exotic sound, if approached like a more standard blues scale; bending
notes will get this almost straight away; those semi tone bends I was just talking about,
in particular sound great. Also things like hammering and pulling off that shape this,
em, semi-tone then tone and a half. Also, if you add quarter tone bends, you can get
a cool microtonal type of sound So just little bends, in particular on the 3rd and 5th, the
root to a lesser extent. I mean if, you can get these types of tiny bends from aggressive
pull offs and hammers as well .
That was the Phrygian Dominant, if you want some more exotic sounds check out What it
Marty Friedman (Ex-Megadeth) replaced Kirk Hammett in Metallica, or this George Lynch
Pro tips tutorial. If you’ve enjoyed this, want to help this channel grow and stay up
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