repurposing pentatonics

For a lot of musicians (especially guitarists) pentatonic scales and licks are among the first things learned improvisationally. But of course pentatonics go way beyond this: they're used everywhere from real American sounding tunes like Amazing Grace to jazz/blues/rock/country/bluegrass to 20th century classical music.

So here's the thing to consider first: just like any other scale pentatonics have modes. That is the collection of notes that make them up can be started (and ended) at different points. Take for example this collection of tones:

c d e g a c d e g a c d ...

If we start this at c we get:

c d e g a c, aka the major pentatonic scale.

If we start at a we get:

a c d e g a, the minor pentatonic scale.

There are 3 other modes, too, but the major and minor are the most common.

Now, as a guitarist I'm just naturally inclined to consider the minor pentatonic as the basic one. Especially from a playing point of view. And this is the first main point of this post: any minor pentatonic lick can be used over its relative major key area. It just simply becomes a major pentatonic in those instances. And the reason for this is that the mode isn't really determined by where we start and stop and what we emphasize in a scale but by what is emphasized harmonically. Put yet another way: playing an A minor pentatonic lick over a C major chord results in a major pentatonic lick sound.

In that vein let's end this post with some numeric thinking which will become extremely helpful when you start to use pentatonics (especially in later posts). When you play your pentatonic licks try to think of how the tones relate to the underlying harmony. Consider these situations again:

A minor triad:
a = 1
c = b3
d = 4
e = 5
g = b7

C major triad:
a = 6
c = 1
d = 2
e = 3
g = 5

The main advantage to a numeric understanding is that it generalizes the information so that you can understand not how just a specific pentatonic relates to a certain chord but how they relate in all cases.

In the next pentatonic we'll see a whole array of other areas where pentatonics can easily be used.