Guitar soloing and improvisation - Lesson Two

Overlap and Glue

Well, here we are again, ready for another round. To carry on from last month's column I'd like to introduce you to another Major Scale pattern. Let's be unpredictable and instead of going for pattern 2, we'll look at pattern 5. 

You'll notice that the right side of pattern 5 holds the same structure (one octave higher) as the left side of pattern 1 from last month's column.  This makes it easy to visualize overlapping the two patterns, then just "glue" them together and you've got a larger block of notes to work with.

As you're looking at pattern 5 of the Major Scale, you'll see that I've got the root notes circled (as I do with my other patterns).  If you were to ignore the circled notes and play pattern 5 as if the lowest note were the root (1 1/2 steps below the Major Scale root), you would actually be playing the Natural Minor scale.  The Natural Minor scale employs the same notes as its relative Major Scale!  In our example, the "E" Natural Minor scale has the same notes (different focus) as the "G" Major Scale.

[Lesson 1]   [Lesson 2]   [Lesson 3] [Lesson 4]   [Lesson 5]   [Lesson 6]  

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Pat Baxter is a recording artist and author of the guitar instruction book called "Rockin' The Modes".

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