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Mike7771
Registered User
Joined: 01/25/04
Posts: 9
Mike7771
Registered User
Joined: 01/25/04
Posts: 9
03/14/2004 12:37 am
1guitarfreak20 - regarding your question about the pentatonic scale. I think the real answer is minor, but this is a bit tricky because although the general rule of thumb for determining if a scale is major or minor is if the scale has a major or minor third. The pentatonic scale does have a flat 3rd but in some situations a using this scale over a major I, IV, V progression is acceptible.

So the best I can say is sometimes it acts like a major scale sometimes it acts like a minor scale.

When most people talk of major pentatonic they are talking about a mode of the pentatonic scale.

E ---------------------------------------1--3---------------
B --------------------------------1--3----------------------
G ------------------------0--3----------------------------
D -----------------0--3-------------------------------------
A ----------1--3--------------------------------------------
E ---1--3---------------------------------------------------

When most people talk of minor pentatonic they are talking about the first mode of the pentatonic scale.

E ----------------------------------------3--6-----------------
B ---------------------------------3--6------------------------
G -------------------------3--5--------------------------------
D ------------------3--5---------------------------------------
A -----------3--5----------------------------------------------
E ----3--6-----------------------------------------------------

There is a good reason you a confussed by this, I am too. And it get more confussing too. Because although the two scale forms I show above look different they are in fact the same scale. If you were to play the chords F - Bb - C and use the scale about you would be playing a major pentatonic. If you use either of the scales above, over the chords Gm - Cm - Dm it would be a minor pentatonic. Ok I know this is a long explaination, but truth is I still have not answered the question completly. You see there are three pentatonic scales in every major key. So, you chould play chords from a given key and I would be able to play three pentatonic scales over it, each scale I could use will have a differnt function. Two of these functions would be minor, and one would be major. To truely understand this I would have to even deeper but I will leave it here. Hope this helped a little. SOMETIMES MAJOR SOMETIMES MINOR is the best I can do.

Spanky10940 - Hey thanks, I'm always happy to hear about people speading the word. Let me know if you ever need help with any of it.