electric guitarst playing single notes
I recently crossed paths with a young man playing a Gibson using only single notes, it reminded me of years ago when I would bang on a piano's black keys. No it didn't follow any particular pattern but it didn't sound bad. This young man was doing something similar and it too sounded pretty good. I didn't get an opportunity to ask him exactly what he was doing but it has really bothered me that I didn't. I've only been playing a couple of years and I sure would like to be able to play like that. It was kind of bluesy and yet I felt he was choosing the notes and making it up as he went. Anyone got a clue as to what he was playing. Is this some kind of scale or something?
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It would sound familiar. He was probably playing the notes from the pentatonic scales. There are two, both containing the same notes. Let's take those notes in the key of C. C, D, E, G and A. Thus missing out the B and F from the full C maj. scale. They all sound fine, played in any order, partly because the 'avoid' notes of B and F don't get played. Together those two produce what's called a TRITONE, one of the more dissonant mixes of notes.
Now, we'll take all the same notes, but not in the same order (sic) A, C, D, E and G. Using the A as a home note, we're now in A minor pentatonic. Ironically, these notes somehow fit in A minor AND A major.
Your Gibson player may well have slipped a 'blue' note into his playing, too. Funnily enough, a tritone from the root of the key. If so, then he was playing notes from the blues scale.
Back to the piano, the five black keys play those same pentatonics, but in different keys. D#/Eb minor, and F#/Gb major. There are many tunes that only use those note -Amazing Grace springs to mind.
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