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1) Tales from the gig. Monthly feature with a lesson we can all learn from.

2) Readers questions. Answers to your questions concerning guitar related issues.

matters.

Tales From The Gig

This months story involves an incident that occurred at an outdoor gig I played last summer. The band I am currently working in, The Chandler Wright Story (www.cwstory.com) was booked to play a local festival. Upon arrival and after setting up my gear things just were not working properly. My amp didn’t sound right, my effects processor didn’t work, my whole rig just wasn’t responding the way it should.

As you know, the show must go on. I unplugged my effects and went straight to the amp to get through the gig. My amp still sounded horrible and I found I had to turn it up a lot louder than normal to be heard. We managed to get the job done, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on with my gear.

After the gig, in an attempt to solve the problems I had experienced, I took the following steps. I bought new tubes for my amp thinking that might help since it had been a while since I had replaced them. I also bought a new power supply for my effects processor.

In the meantime, we talked to some friends of ours that played in the band that went on after us. Their keyboard player experienced similar difficulties. His keyboards just refused to work. As it turned out, the generator they were using to power the stage was only turned up about halfway, so none of the gear was getting the power it needed to work properly. In all of my years of playing and gigging had never had that happen before.

The end result of this fiasco for me? I lost all of the sounds I had programmed into my effects processor. For those of you interested in such things I use a Korg AX30G. Something about the lack of power killed the memory. I had no record of the patches I had written, so I had to start from scratch and reprogram all of my sounds.

The lesson to learn from this. Make a backup of all of your sounds. I now have a written record of all of my patches that includes the patch name, position and bank number, effects used and the parameters of each effect. If I would have had this info before, it would have saved a lot of time, not to mention the fact that I was not able to recreate some of my favorite sounds exactly.

Do yourself a favor and make a record of your favorite sounds. It could save you a lot of time and frustration someday! You’ll be glad you did.

Reader Questions

Hi Bob

Though I have played a guitar for many years, I am just learning to improvise with the pentatonic scale. There is one nagging question. When the song changes chords not (keys) the same pentatonic scale does not sound correct on certain notes. How does one change to match the chord change? oDoes this scale and these notes have to change when the chord changes---how?

Let's use a song in the key of A as an example. Suppose you have a chord progression that uses the 1, 4 and 5 chords. In the key of A that would be A, D and E. This would be the same 3 chords you would find in the blues. The simple approach would be to play an A minor pentatonic scale over all 3 chords. When you do this, our ears accept this as being OK because we have heard these sounds repeatedly in all styles of music. But even doing this creates a mismatch between the chords and the scale.

Look at the notes in the A minor pentatonic scale. A C D E G

Here are the notes in the A chord. A C# E

There is a clash between the C and the C#. This clash however, is also what helps to create the blues sound. The flatted third against the natural third if you will. To take things a little deeper, the pentatonic scale also contains G natural. This note is a flat 7 when played against the A chord. Again, this is an OK sound and creates a dominant 7th chord, but if you are trying to create an A major sound this too may sound a little off because the A major scale contains G#.

Let's look at the D chord now compared to the A minor pentatonic scale.

Here are the notes in a D chord. D F# A

The A minor pentatonic scale. A C D E G

Compared to the D chord we see the A minor pentatonic scale contains A and D which are both part of the chord. The C is a flatted 7th against the D chord. Again, this is a useful sound but takes us away from the A major tonality because the A major scale contains C#. The E is the 2nd or more commonly called the 9th against the D chord. This note creates some tension against the D chord but is a sound I really like.

Where you run into trouble in this situation is the F# sounding against the G in the pentatonic scale. The G is the 4th compared to the 3rd(F#) of the D chord. To my ears this is one of the worst clashes you can play. These 2 notes definitely do not sound good together.

Now let's compare the A minor pentatonic to the E chord.

Here are the notes in the E chord. E G# B

The A minor pentatonic scale. A C D E G

Here we have all kind of trouble. The A is the 4th compared to the E chord and doesn't sound that great for the reason stated above. The C is a flat 6 compare to the E chord and takes us away from the A major tonality which contains C#. There is also a half step between the C and the B in the E chord which creates tension. The D is the flat 7 which sounds good and the E is the root which of course is a perfect match. The G is the flat 3 compared to the natural 3rd(G#) of the E chord. When comparing like this it's easy to see why some notes do not sound correct.

One solution and an answer to your question is to play major pentatonic scales and switch scales for each chord. Here's what that looks like.

A major pentatonic scale has the notes A B C# E F#. When compared to the A chord you see we have all the chord tones(A C# E) plus 2 nice extensions, the 9th and 6th or 13th. Again, be careful of register when you play the tension notes.

The D major pentatonic scale has the notes D E F# A B. The analysis of this is the same as above.

The E major pentatonic scale has the notes E F# G# B C#. Again, the same analysis as above.

By switching from scale to scale when the chords change, you get all of the chords tones to play against each chord plus some nice extensions. Not only that, but if you take the A, D, and E major pentatonic scales and lay out the notes in order, you get the A major scale.

A B C# D E F# G# A

This keeps everything sounding nice and major and you never leave the key of A.

Here are some fingerings if you don't know them.

A major pentatonic

------------------------------------------5---7-- ----------------------------------5---7---------- --------------------------4---6------------------ -----------------4---7--------------------------- ---------4---7----------------------------------- --5--7-------------------------------------------

D major pentatonic

------------------------------------------5---7-- ----------------------------------5---7---------- --------------------------4---7------------------ -----------------4---7--------------------------- ---------5---7----------------------------------- --5--7-------------------------------------------

E major pentatonic

------------------------------------------4---7-- ----------------------------------5---7---------- --------------------------4---6------------------ -----------------4---6--------------------------- ---------4---7----------------------------------- --4--7-------------------------------------------

Notice that they can all be played between the 4th and 7th frets. I recommend that you use one finger per fret so that your 1st finger plays all the notes in the 4th fret, 2nd in the 5th, 3rd in the 6th, and little finger in the 7th. Get to know these really well so that you can switch between them easily so that your transitions from scale to scale are flowing and smooth.

I hope this helps. Being able to play over chord changes and switch scales over the chords like this can elevate your playing to the next level. Keep after it. The rewards are well worth it.

If you are interested, you can hear me play a solo at the end of a song called Simple Life. You can download it at www.cwstory.com. I play over some changes at the end of that song using some of these same concepts.

Good Luck! Here's to your guitar playing success!

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I really appreciate any comments both good and bad that you might have.

If you have any comments at all let me have right between the eyes.

To your guitar playing success.

Best wishes,

Bob