A minor Pentatonic+ A few notes=C Major?

N

NorthernPaul

Multimeh
Hi everyone,

Heres a little story of discovery I just had.

I've recently been learning the A minor pentatonic scale, at the 5th fret. As a (mature) beginner it's quite an exciting thing to be able to mess about with a scale, so I put the chords C Am Em G through my ME-25's looper because they seem to sound good with the Am Pent scale, and I started fannying about trying to improvise. Which was fantastic fun, I might add.:thu:

Anyway, I discovered a few other notes not in the scale sounded really nice, and after hours trawling the internet for scale pics, I think the new notes I found all fit into the C major scale.:confused:

Can anyone shed any light on this for me? Am I right in saying that the A minor pentatonic scale is just 5 notes from the C Major scale? And if I moved the whole thing up to the 7th fret, does that mean that B minor pentatonic would fit into A Major?

I'm pretty sure I've just had a moment when something clicked into place in my head, and I'd love to know if I'm right or wrong!:)

The guitar is a crazy thing when you get into it, haha!:grin:

Anyway, I hope you're all well, and thanks for reading:)

Paul
 
A minor (ABCDEFG) has the same notes as C major (CDEFGAB)... So, the pentatonic is just minus two notes, the B and F... It is either A minor pentatonic (ACDEG) or C major pentatonic (CDEGA)...
 
Am pentatonic is the 1,3,4,5,7 notes from the Am scale A, C, D, E, G move the A from first to last and you have C, D, E, G, A which are the 1,2,3,5,6 notes of the CMaj scale (this is the C major pentatonic scale). So in short, yes add the 4th (F) and 7th (B) notes to the scale and you've got a C Maj scale.
 
Now to completely screw you up, if I were soloing to that progression, I would actually play F# instead of F. I like the way that sounds better.
 
Each major scale has a relative minor... the notes share the same sequence of whole steps and half steps, so if you're in the key of G Major for example (which has one sharp) it's relative minor (E) would also have one sharp and it would be on the same note.

C Major scale is:
C D E F G A B C

An A Minor scale is:
A B C D E F G A.

If you look carefully, you'll see that in a C Major scale, the 6th note is A. A quick and dirty way to quickly pick out the relative minors of a scale is to build your major scale and then find the 6th scale degree. If you're already working with a Minor scale and want to find the relative major, you'll need to move up to the 3rd note in the Minor scale.

You said you were interested in the key of B Minor, so you'd start this way:

B Minor:
B C# D E F# G A B

Move up three notes to D. Your D Major scale would be:

D E F# G A B C# D

Notice that in both scales all of the same notes are present. Congrats, you found your scale!


EDIT: Motherfucking ninja'd. :annoyed:
 
Wow, thanks for the quick and very helpful replies!

This past few days I really feel like I've made a huge jump in the sounds I'm making, so it's really good to know that I was right!

I'm going to watch Marks lesson, then no doubt I will have more questions:wink:

I'm a bit worried that my guitar is starting to make sense to me instead of being an open chord machine!:thu:

Paul
 
So, a G Major Scale is:

W W H W W W H
G A Bb C D E F
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

And a G Minor Scale is:

W W H W W H W
G A Bb C D Eb F
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

So the relative of G Major is E Minor, and the relative of G Minor is Bb Major?

I know I could probably just look this stuff up on the net, but I prefer to try and work it out and then be corrected and learn why I made a mistake.

Thanks again:)

Paul
 
NorthernPaul said:
So, a G Major Scale is:

W W H W W W H
G A Bb C D E F
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

And a G Minor Scale is:

W W H W W H W
G A Bb C D Eb F
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

So the relative of G Major is E Minor, and the relative of G Minor is Bb Major?

I know I could probably just look this stuff up on the net, but I prefer to try and work it out and then be corrected and learn why I made a mistake.

Thanks again:)

Paul
Click to expand...

G Major is G A B C D E F# G, the Relative Minor being E Minor.

G Minor would be G A Bb C D Eb F, the Relative Major being Bb Major.

Looks like you made the mistake on the G Major.
 
NorthernPaul said:
Cool, I see what I did:wink:

So the G Minor Pentatonic is:

1 3 4 5 7
G Bb C D F?

Paul
Click to expand...

Yep! :thu:...and I'd probably do the same as Tricky..that is, play an F#..treating the original progression more like G Major rather than C Major..but both work fine.
 
TrickyBoy said:
Yeah, 30 years of playing and I just figured out that's what I was doing. I always did it because I like the sound of adding the 13th... Plus it's all over Prince's rhythm playing :)
Click to expand...

I've been playing since 1981, and only within the last few months have I bothered to actually learn this stuff, myself! :)
 
If you were playing against C Am Em G would you really think "I'm playing A Dorian"?

I would have thought that if you're thinking anything at all (other than "this F# sounds cool") you'd be thinking in terms of C. Like C Lydian.

Hmm. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the thought process would be "Ah, C major. Heh, where's the box for that, let's see, it's really Am, so it's pentatonics here on the 5th fret... now, I remember that Dorian shape is cool, I'll do that" :grin:

GaJ
 
GreenAsJade said:
If you were playing against C Am Em G would you really think "I'm playing A Dorian"?

I would have thought that if you're thinking anything at all (other than "this F# sounds cool") you'd be thinking in terms of C. Like C Lydian.

Hmm. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the thought process would be "Ah, C major. Heh, where's the box for that, let's see, it's really Am, so it's pentatonics here on the 5th fret... now, I remember that Dorian shape is cool, I'll do that" :grin:

GaJ
Click to expand...


This is exactly how I think :lol:
 
GreenAsJade said:
If you were playing against C Am Em G would you really think "I'm playing A Dorian"?

I would have thought that if you're thinking anything at all (other than "this F# sounds cool") you'd be thinking in terms of C. Like C Lydian.

Hmm. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the thought process would be "Ah, C major. Heh, where's the box for that, let's see, it's really Am, so it's pentatonics here on the 5th fret... now, I remember that Dorian shape is cool, I'll do that" :grin:

GaJ
Click to expand...

Actually if someone told me those chords on a gig I would just think I was playing in C major.
 
GreenAsJade said:
If you were playing against C Am Em G would you really think "I'm playing A Dorian"?

I would have thought that if you're thinking anything at all (other than "this F# sounds cool") you'd be thinking in terms of C. Like C Lydian.

Hmm. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the thought process would be "Ah, C major. Heh, where's the box for that, let's see, it's really Am, so it's pentatonics here on the 5th fret... now, I remember that Dorian shape is cool, I'll do that" :grin:

GaJ
Click to expand...

Yea, good point, it would really be C major pentatonic... If the main starting chord is a C, then I would think in terms of it being in C Lydian (same notes as A Dorian), if I were playing the F#, or in C major (same notes as A minor), if not sharpening the F...

Basically, with the chords C, Am, Em, and G, I see them fitting neatly on top of two different well known patterns, CM/Am and GM/Em, and all the nifty pentatonic scales fit nicely on top of ether of those patterns...
 
I've been playing 22 years. Like Paul said....i Still don't get the essence of it. The parts above relating major and minor are clues. But rather than memorizing the implications I want to understand the core theory... like why are the notes in a cord there to start with and then why do 7 and minor sound shapes relate. I'm still not answered here either though appreciate clues.... best I can figure so far is by relating the harmonics to cord content. Can someone point to the core math?
Thanks.
 
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