Choosing A Guitar Scale To Solo With
One question I often get from beginning guitarists is how to decide what scale to use over a particular set of chord changes
. You've drilled you minor pentatonic into the ground and you're looking for something new. There are a few different ways to think about it, all of them valid. I'd like to present a good way to get started with the least amount of thinking.
First you need to find out what the key the song is in. This will give you a basic framework. Take a look at the key signature if you're working with standard notation. Lacking that, you can usually tell by the last chord of the piece. You're looking for the chord that comes to a rest.
Let's say we're in the key of F major. Your chords would be F Gm Am Bb C Dm Edim.
Since you're in the key of F major, you can play and F major scale over any of the chords that appear above. Every single note in each of those chords appear in that scale. That's why we call them "diatonic" chords.
Now, you may notice as you're playing around with it, that some of the notes don't work as well over some chords even if you're playing the right scale. You really want to use your ears here to decide which notes you like or not over a particular chord. All of them theoretically work. It's just a matter of how dissonant you want to be. The note Bb over a Gm chord will fit perfectly. The note C, less so, but it works as a chord extension, which is perfectly ok.
The idea is to shoot for chord tones. So, over an F major chord you'll play F, A, and C. That doesn't mean you can't use other notes, but those three will sound very solid. Fill in the other notes, but target those three in important places like beat 1.
Now, let's say we have a progression like this: F A7 Dm Bb Which of those chords contains a note that isn't in our F major scale? If you said A7, you're correct! There's a C# in that chord that isn't contained in our scale. And so, over that A7, your regular F major scale won't sound as good.
The solution? In the future you may learn how to change to a completely different scale when you encounter a non-diatonic chord, but for right now, the easy way is to just swap out the C natural in your scale for a C# just over that A7 chord. Nailing that C# over the A7 is going to make your line stand out because your listener will hear that you're tracking the chord changes accurately.
Practice playing over just the first two chords, F and A7, changing the C to C# each time. Once you can do that, the rest of the progression is back in your regular scale.
So, find your home base scale to use over most of the piece. Then pinpoint the chords that contain notes outside that scale and be sure to nail them as they go by. That takes a lot of the stress out of soloing because you don't actually have to change scales for an odd chord.
Of course, this is only one way to think about this, but I've found it to be the simplest entry point. Good luck!
Choosing A Guitar Scale To Solo With
By: Phil Johnson
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