If you're used to improvising on your guitar there's little doubt that you will already have a good familiarity of the minor pentatonic scale. And let's face it what a useful scale it is. Not only does it sound great whatever style of music you play it also doesn't seem to matter what you play it over – you can even play it over major chords or keys and it still sounds cool despite it being a minor scale. I still don't know why that is but who cares right? It means instant access to great licks without having to think too much. However, I notice a lot players who use, or even rely, on this scale for their lead chops tend to not make full use of what you can do with it on the guitar. This lesson is the first of a series of lessons that talks about just that i.e. how to crank it up a notch and really make it rock.
Sweep picking an arpeggio that's already there!
Many of you may not realise that there is actually simple arpeggio already sitting there within the minor pentatonic scale just waiting to be put to good use and that's just what we're going to do – by sweep picking it! If you don't know what an arpeggio is it's basically the notes from a chord played individually but in the right order. That's all you need to know for the moment.
First thing we need to know is what the minor pentatonic is made of, or should I say what intervals it is constructed from. It's a five note scale that goes like so: root note, minor 3rd, 4th, 5th and minor 7th. So in the case of A minor pentatonic that would work out as these notes: A, C, D, E and G. An A minor arpeggio is exactly the same except without the 4th. So an A minor arpeggio would be these notes: A, C, E and G.
Okay that's the theory. Now lets make it work on the guitar fret board – but I'm going to place the notes conveniently in a way that will allow us to sweep pick them – more on the sweep picking in a second, first lets get the pattern in our heads.
E|---------------------------------------------8------12---------|
This choice of notes actually gives us an arpeggio and a half because it finishes on the second 5th of the arpeggio (on the 12th fret). But that's good because it gives us a wider spread of notes which sounds very cool at speed.
B|-----------------------------8------10-------------------------|
G|----------------------9----------------------------------------|
D|--------7-----10-----------------------------------------------|
A|---------------------------------------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------------------------------|
Okay now let's cover the sweep picking. For those of you that don't know what sweep picking is it basically means using the same pick to cover two or more strings by using the same direction of pick. In effect, a sweep across the strings. In order to do this you need to have only one note (or an odd number of notes) per string otherwise you will have to make a pick in the wrong direction across strings which will screw up the sweep. Because of that we have a slight problem in the arpeggio tabbed out above.
There are three strings with two notes on, so how can we sweep it? Well in the case of the E string that's fine because we actually want two notes on that string in order to change the direction of the picking so that we can go back the other way and keep the sweep momentum going. The D string is also fine because we're going to start with an up stroke so the second note will be a down stroke leading to the next string. But the B string needs to be sorted out. And I sort it out by simply missing out the second note on the 10th fret, which is the root note. It's okay we don't need it. No one is going to notice one missing A in a solo in the key of A. There will be plenty of As to make up for it not being there. So that makes our arpeggio shape look like this. Note the picking directions above the tab.
U D D D D U
But to make it rock we need go up and down the arpeggio, and then up again and possibly down again and up again and down again etc etc. So we need to include a return pathway which will make the whole thing look like this.
E|--------------------------------------------8------12----------|
B|-----------------------------------8---------------------------|
G|--------------------------9------------------------------------|
D|---------7------10---------------------------------------------|
A|---------------------------------------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------------------------------|
U D D D D U U U U D
E|--------------------------------------------8------12--------------------------------------|
B|-----------------------------------8------------------------8------------------------------|
G|--------------------------9------------------------------------------9---------------------|
D|---------7------10-----------------------------------------------------------10-------9----|
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
You'll notice I've added a cheeky extra note on the end there (B) which isn't in an A minor arpeggio or even in the A minor pentatonic scale but we need an extra note on that string on the way back down in order to set up the necessary up stroke to start the process again. Again, don't worry. It's not against the guitar playing law to add a note or two when you need it and nobody's going to notice it when you playing at full pelt.
This arpeggio is a great exercise in perfecting your sweep picking technique and gives you option of being able to keep it going as log as you want – though I wouldn't advise that you do it too much as it will start to sound very boring and repetitive, but you get the idea. So get practising and make sure you get used to it in other keys as well or you'll only be able to play it one key. And I strongly advise you to use a metronome at a nice slow speed to start to make sure you are playing it smoothly otherwise it will just sound like a rake across the strings and that's not the idea.
Look out for another lesson on Cranking up the minor pentatonic scale coming soon. ROCK!
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