DESCRIPTION:
‘Miles’ Better Pentatonics - Resources here - http://www.glyndevey.com/tuition/lessons/milesbetterpentatonics/milesbetterpentatonics_102bpm.zip

Mechanics of Music - Click for more info.

Do you every find yourself stuck in a pentatonic rut when improvising? The ‘one size fits all’ approach of pentatonic has it’s place but can grow tiresome for the musician and the audience.

This approach is inspired by Miles Davis approach to harmonising the minor pentatonic scale.

In order to make sense of this, you’ll need to be aware of:

1. The Minor Pentatonic scale
2. Major triads (root position, first inversion and second inversion)

The idea is:

1. Harmonise the "Top Note" of each degres of the pentatonic scale with a major 3rd and major 6th below it.
2. It may help to think of the 'Top Note" as the 3rd of Major Triad in 2nd Inversion. Eg. F/A = C F A
3. The seconds chord for each scale tone harmony is created by taking the two lower harmony notes and drop them by a semitone to create the a root note ‘sus2’ chord.

So each scale tone has two chords associated with it.

I also forgot to mention on the video that an aid to remembering the triad chords is to follow the pattern of a minor pentatonic scale from the imposed 1st triad (major third below) root note, so Fm pentatonic on Am pentatonic!! Cool eh!

So in Am:

F, Ab, Bb, C, Eb - the Fm Pentatonic scale in triads played over an "A" root.

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Apologies for the poor quality of the video, it was a quick trial video whilst my new studio is being completed, filmed ad hoc and not to mention me being very ill! so this is very warts and all :-(

Anyway, hopefully there are some interesting ideas in there for anyone who wish to spice up their pentatonic approach to playing irrespective of style or instrument; it applies everywhere… that’s the mechanics of music for ya!

Have fun!