Like I said, you could play an A minor pentatonic over any of the chords in the key center of C major, but for some there are better options. In fact, it would be more accurate to play a G13sus chord since the 6th is also played. You could just play a regular V dominant chord, but since the relative minor pentatonic emphasizes the sus4, it would be appropriate to think of it this way. Of course, you could also just play a D minor pentatonic over a Dmin7 chord. More accurately, you could play a Dmin9 or a Dmin11, since both of those extensions are hit in the A minor pentatonic. In this case, we would be playing an A minor pentatonic scale over D minor 7. The minor ii chord of the relative major. The 6th note of the F major scale is played in the A minor pentatonic, so if you wanted to be more specific, you could play an Fmaj13 chord. If we are thinking in the key of C major, the IV chord is F major 7. The major IV chord of the relative major. This is only just a way to conceptualize it. In a musical situation, what note you start on doesn’t really matter. The A minor pentatonic scale is really the same as a C major pentatonic scale, only starting on an A note. What chords are all relative to C major? Here they are: I: Cmaj7 ii: Dmin7 iii: Emin7 IV: Fmaj7 V: G7 vi: Amin7 (relative minor) vii: Bmin7(b5)įor pretty much all of these you can play an A minor pentatonic, although some I would suggest otherwise. Or if you are starting with a major chord, move up a major sixth and that is the relative minor. A trick to finding that out is to move up a minor third from the root. The important thing to understand is this: for every minor chord there is a relative major and vise versa.įor example, An A minor chord (which corresponds with our A minor pentatonic scale), is relative to C major. We can also think about using minor pentatonic scales in the context of a key center. Regardless, this grouping of notes works out well. Just remember, nothing is stopping you from adding that 3rd in yourself! The scale does skip the 3rd of A7 (C#), which would spell out the difference between a minor and a dominant chord. This is most commonly applied in a blues situation.

In the same way, an A minor pentatonic can be played over an A7 chord. So you can play an A minor pentatonic over an Amin7 (or just Am) chord. When I say root minor chords, I mean that the root of the chord is the same root of the scale. This one makes a lot of sense right? It’s a minor scale with 5 notes (hence minor pentatonic) so playing this scale over a minor scale is going to make sense. For the most part, I’ll try to stick to the A minor pentatonic scale to help provide more clarity. Okay, now let’s start checking out some different ways to apply the minor penatonic scale to different kinds of chords. You’ll also notice I notated two octaves of the scale, which I believe is important to be able to do.

You’ll notice I added the 9th (C) as the top note before going back down the scale. In case you aren’t familiar with the minor pentatonic scale, here is an A minor pentatonic notated, which we will be using as a reference point for this lesson: Okay, that’s my disclaimer, now let’s move on! They can help us group notes together in a functional way, and understand music theoretically, but it is up to the musician to use that knowledge to create actual musical ideas. But they are not musical in and of themselves. Now before I dive in to the lesson, let me offer up my philosophy on scales in general: Scales can offer us a way to conceptualize music and help us learn our instrument better.

But if you take a deeper look, you’ll discover that the minor pentatonic scale has a lot more to offer! Often times it’s thought of in a blues context, which of course the minor pentatonic scale lends itself to quite nicely. However, I find that many musicians think about using this scale with a limited perspective. The minor pentatonic scale is a fairly well-known scale, and I imagine many of you have used it before. The video above is based on the lesson below.

Minor pentatonic scale