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com 25 Sep 2020

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Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Do You Really Know the 5 Shapes? ............................................................................................................... 3
Soloing Over Chord Progressions I ................................................................................................................ 6
The Rule of 5 ............................................................................................................................................. 7
Soloing Over Chord Progressions II ............................................................................................................... 8
Soloing Over Chord Progressions III .............................................................................................................. 9
Soloing Over Chord Progressions IV............................................................................................................ 10
Soloing Study: Little Wing ........................................................................................................................... 11
Bringing Out the Chord Tones..................................................................................................................... 12
Shape 1.................................................................................................................................................... 12
Shape 2.................................................................................................................................................... 12
Shape 3.................................................................................................................................................... 13
Shape 4.................................................................................................................................................... 13
Shape 5.................................................................................................................................................... 13
Where to Next? ........................................................................................................................................... 14
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Introduction
In this eBook, we’re going to look at how to solo over chord changes using the major and minor
pentatonic scales you probably learned early on in your playing.

You may be used to blowing over a chord progression with one pentatonic scale, and while this is all well
and good, the method we’re about to dive into will make you sound like you’re playing over and
acknowledging the changes rather than blasting past them. In other words, it will make you sound like
you know exactly what you’re doing as this book bridges the gap between chords and scales from a
pentatonic perspective.

This is a very simple method and a solid basis for learning how to improvise; it’s a great one for beginner
and intermediate guitarists alike as it doesn’t require a lot of in-depth theory to be able to put it into
practice.

I suggest working through this book in the order it is written as each chapter builds on the previous one,
and if you don’t have one already, treat yourself to a looper pedal – I recommend the tc electronic ditto,
which is a great looper at a very reasonable price. If you don’t have a looper or aren’t planning to buy
one, any recording device will do so that you can play over the chord progressions.

All the best,

Graham Tippett

www.unlocktheguitar.net
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Do You Really Know the 5 Shapes?

I know you know the five pentatonic shapes but here’s a quick recap. You can also use these shapes to
warm up before you get stuck into improvising.

Here are the five shapes for G Minor Pentatonic:

The better you know all five shapes, the more you’ll get out of this book so it’s worth spending some
time making sure you know them inside out before continuing. If you still have a few gray areas, keep
reading but do come back and fill in the gaps. You don’t have to know them in every key due to the ease
of transposing shapes on the guitar.

The Major Pentatonic Scale

You may have already realized that the minor pentatonic shapes are the same as the major pentatonic
shapes BUT you still have to make the major ones SOUND major.

In the following diagram, G Minor Pentatonic and Bb Major Pentatonic share the same shape. Put both
chords (Gm and Bb) into your looper or record them and play the scale to hear the difference. For Bb
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Major Pentatonic, you can’t really use the same minor pentatonic licks you do with G Minor Pentatonic
as they’ll sound odd; the reason being that you’re forcing G Minor Pentatonic over a Bb Major chord.

TASK: Work on making this scale shape sound like both G Minor Pentatonic and Bb Major Pentatonic, at
least to your ear. Essentially, when you’re playing over the Gm chord, you need to relate your licks and
runs to G, and when you’re playing over the Bb chord, you need to relate everything to Bb.

Why do G Minor and Bb Major have the same shape?

This has to do with the fact that G Minor is the relative minor of Bb Major. Every major key has a relative
minor, which is always the sixth note of the scale. Take the key of C Major, the sixth note is A so A Minor
is the relative minor of C Major and these two scales share the same shapes.

Here are the other four pairs of shapes for you to practice with. This one lends itself well to both major
and minor sounds as it is the often-used extension to shape one (above) of the minor pentatonic, and
when it’s the major pentatonic the notes fall nicely round the barre chord shape (Bb in this case).

Here’s the next pair of shapes. Try bringing out the major and minor sound without a backing track.
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And the next pair. You should be getting the hang of this now and starting to hear a real difference
between major and minor.

Here’s the last pair of shapes to practice with.

Checkpoint
By now you should know the five shapes like the back of your hand and be able to bring both major and
minor sounds out of them. Make sure you’ve got this down before moving to the next section where
we’ll be applying this knowledge to common chord progressions.
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Soloing Over Chord Progressions I

At some point you’ve probably played A Minor Pentatonic over a jam track on YouTube or perhaps when
jamming with another guitarist or bass player. A common progression could be something like:

Am | C | G | F

While you can happily solo over this progression using just the A Minor Pentatonic Scale and never really
know or care why it works, we could use a pentatonic scale for each chord instead! This is not as
complicated as it sounds, even for someone in their first year of playing, and you can always fall back on
A Minor Pentatonic if you get lost.

Here are the shapes we’re going to use over each chord:

We start out in Am Pentatonic and when the chord changes to C we use the same shape but relating our
licks and runs to C to bring out the major sound. When you hear the progression go to G, use the
corresponding G Major Pentatonic shape and do the same with F.

You’ll notice that we’re keeping the shapes in the same area of the fretboard so that you’re not jumping
all over it. Also notice that the shapes share a lot of the same notes but with a little effort you can land
on the ones they don’t share when the chords change to really make it sound like you’re changing scales
with each chord.
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Record or loop yourself playing the progression with a lot of time on each chord and, very slowly at first,
start familiarizing yourself with the scale shape for each chord; if you know them well, you’ll soon be
able to solo with them quite freely.

The Rule of 5
It makes sense that as we have five patterns, we can apply the same principle in five places on the neck.

As you can see, it’s the very same idea but up at the 12th fret. With a little practice, you’ll have the
entire fretboard at your disposal for each chord. You can probably see what I mean when I said that the
better you know the five patterns, the more powerful this concept becomes. For now, just go at your
own pace and concentrate on blending those shapes together as the chords change.

It is somewhat of a myth that you have to (be able to) cover every inch of the fretboard to improvise
well. Using this concept, you can carve an incredibly effective and melodic solo by just staying in one
position. This is exactly what the master improvisers such as SRV, Hendrix and Clapton do when they
solo; they’re outlining the changes with their lines in one or two areas of the neck.
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Soloing Over Chord Progressions II

In this example, we’re going to use just two chords: Bm and E. Your instinct will probably take you to
shape 1 of B Minor Pentatonic, which is perfectly fine, but how can we emphasize that change from Bm
to E? Take a look.

So instead of just blowing over these two chords using B Minor Pentatonic, we can switch between B
Minor Pentatonic and E Major Pentatonic for a more melodic effect.

Again, we have five locations we can do this on the fretboard. Here’s another example a little further up
the fretboard.

You don’t have to religiously learn all five options as at this stage it’s more important to get comfortable
changing shapes with each chord; in fact, you will prefer certain parts of the fretboard to others and this
is absolutely fine.
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Soloing Over Chord Progressions III

Here’s an interesting progression:

Em | D | C | B

It’s what’s referred to as an Andalusian Cadence because it features heavily in flamenco music. In theory
terms, it’s quite a complicated progression to improvise over if you try to do it by just blowing through
the changes with the E Minor Pentatonic scale.

Luckily for us, we can easily adapt our method to cope with virtually any chord progression that’s
thrown at us. Believe me, even guitarists who have been playing for a long time get thrown by this
progression if they’re trying to hack through it using just one scale.

Take a look at the shapes we’ll be using.

We start out in E Minor Pentatonic, then move to D Major Pentatonic, next up is C Major Pentatonic…
but the genius part here is simply moving the C pattern down a fret to cope with that rogue B Major
chord. Record the progression into your looper and try it out!
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Soloing Over Chord Progressions IV

Let’s look at a classic chord progression you’ll find in songs like ‘Under the Bridge’ and thousands of
others.

D | A | Bm | G

Here’s a way you could approach this progression using our pentatonic system but remember to
experiment with the other positions on the fretboard.
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Soloing Study: Little Wing

Let’s apply what we’ve learned to the fantastic ‘Little Wing’ by Jimi Hendrix. This is a great one to solo
over using this method. Here are the shapes you’ll need up at the 12th fret but feel free to try this out in
other parts of the fretboard.

The verse chords are: Em | G | Am | Em | Bm | Am | C | G | F | C | D

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Bringing Out the Chord Tones

I’ve left this until the end of the book because it’s a great exercise to do once you’re very comfortable
with the method. We’re going to use arpeggios to home in on the chord tones when soloing over a
progression. Running through arpeggios helps what your ear is probably already doing by gravitating
towards the chord tones within the pentatonic scales.

I’ve found that beginner to intermediate players have more success with chord tones by practicing
arpeggios than trying to find them on the fly. As an arpeggio is essentially the chord spelled out in single
notes, consistently practicing them will make you naturally gravitate towards them when you’re playing;
in other words, you’ll get better results without making a conscious effort.

We’ll practice arpeggios by comparing the G Minor and Bb Major shapes we learned at the beginning of
the book, only now they’re arpeggios. All you need do is practice them in the following pairs.

Shape 1

Shape 2
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Shape 3

Shape 4

Shape 5
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Where to Next?
We’ve covered an incredible amount of ground in this book, especially if you’re in the first few years of
your guitar journey. There is a second book in the works which will be a continuation of this
methodology into more advanced chord progressions and scales.

Practice the five scale and arpeggio shapes on a daily basis and you’ll see a vast improvement when you
improvise over the chord progressions in this book, or any others to which you apply this method. By
using a scale for each chord instead of just belting through a chord progression with the one-scale-fits-
all concept, you’ll be laying the foundations to becoming a solid and confident improviser, as well as
avoiding a huge headache further down the road!

Thank you for taking an interest in this book. I hope it contributes to taking your playing to new levels.

Graham Tippett

www.unlocktheguitar.net

P.S. If you like my approach to teaching guitar, check out the blog where you’ll find over 300 lessons and
our wide selection of other titles.