Advanced Lesson
EXERCISE FOUR
EXERCISE FIVE
2:4 played descending, but for this exercise and the exercises that follow, I will combine the two scales to create a larger exercise or melodic phrase. The objective is to become accustomed to playing these two shapes together as one 'macro-scale'. Getting this larger shape into the muscle memory will allow you to see more of the fretboard as you improvise. Again, I've talked about this in previous lessons. Ultimately, understanding all the options available to you is essential to your creativity.
familiar to you, but I think there's something about breaking this exercise down into pairs that makes the pattern more memorable.
The other advantage of thinking in terms of these 'pentatonic pairs' is that we can change the direction of these pairs to create different melodic patterns. For example, in Exercises 3 and 4, we played each pair ascending to create the resulting melodic pattern. In Exercise 5, each pair is
As each pair is played from high to low, you can hear a change in the characteristic tonality of the scale. To my ears, this is a beautiful melodic pattern and one I can easily integrate into my solos, bass-lines and fills. We'll discuss how to apply ideas effectively in a future lesson. For now, let's get back to our pentatonic pairs.
You can see how thinking of the minor and major pentatonic scales in this way allows you to see them differently. For example, you might use the pairs to come up with different sequences to explore the ENT
Listen to Flea's bass parts: You'll hear plenty of pentatonics in there.
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