CREATIVE ROCK

Shaun Baxter reveals how to change just one note of the Minor Pentatonic to reveal an exotic alternative for Dominant chord vamps.

Shaun Baxter delves deeper into Pentatonic scales with a look at the Indian variety.

Recently, we’ve been learning how each of the following Pentatonic scales can be used over a static Dominant chord accompaniment: A B C# E G 1 2 3 5 b7 In this lesson, we are going to add the Indian Pentatonic scale to this list as it’s another useful five-note entity that exists within the Mixolydian scale:

A Indian Pentatonic

A CDEG 1 b3 4 5 b7 Although it is Mixolydian with the 2nd and 6th missing, it can also be seen as a Minor Pentatonic with a major 3rd instead of a minor 3rd.

Diagram 1 shows the A Indian Pentatonic scale laid out in a guitar-friendly two-notes-per-string format. Fundamentally, we have simply taken the traditional A Minor Pentatonic shapes and raised each minor 3rd (in this case, C) up a semitone to a major 3rd (C#), keeping that note on the same string.

You should also look at establishing what this scale looks like when extracted from the traditional CAGED shapes of A Mixolydian: the resultant shapes will be very similar to the two-notes-per-string versions shown in Diagram 1; however, the major 3rd and 4th intervals (C# and D) will always appear on the same string, and this is something that will also feature in many of the lines studied here.

In the lesson title, the term ‘vertical’, refers to the fact that the majority of the notes from each line reside over a specific area of the fretboard in varous CAGED positions.

In next month’s lesson, we will be looking at lateral motion whereby we study lines that travel along the length of the neck. As a prelude to that, you should experiment with all sorts of note configurations for fingering the scale. For example, if 2-2-2-2-2-2 represents two-notes-per-string, then you should also try: 3-3-3-3-3-3 1-3-1-3-1-3 3-1-3-1-3-1 2-3-2-3-2-3 3 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 3 - 2 etc Note that the latter two combinations will produce a symmetrical approach whereby the same fingering is played over three separate octaves on the following string pairs: • Sixth and fifth string • Fourth and third string • Second and first strings This approach is very useful on guitar, and is similar to the way that piano players view notes on their instrument (each octave looking the same). It’s a great way of speedily navigating one end of the neck to the other.

we have simply taken all the a minor pentatonic shapes and raised each minor 3rd to major