pentatonic! Seriously, it’s a good scale.
Damned near sacred when it comes to playing blues guitar. You can bask in the beauty
and simplicity shown in the first example in
Fig. 1. The other scale diagram shows how
it looks when we lower all the roots to G#.
All right, enough with the familiar. You
can see how we can put this new scale to
work in Fig. 2. I played a low E at the
beginning and at the end to give your ear
a tonal reference. I’ll explain more about
that later. I just want you to play it first and
listen to the sound.
Now that you’ve played it, did you
notice what happened to the shape? This
is just an A minor pentatonic scale with
all the roots dropped down a half step.
You can see a strong visual resemblance
to our original A minor pentatonic shape,
as it looks nearly identical. But it’s easy to
spot where our roots have shifted down a
fret on the 1st string, 4th string, and 6th
string. By making that change, our A minor
pentatonic scale has transformed into an
E7#9 13 arpeggio. Now please block that
scary looking label from your mind. We’ll
find a better name later. Right now, back to
our purpose.
Why would we do this? How can we
use this thing? It’s easy! Just check out Fig.
3 and play the “Jimi Hendrix Chord” in
E, and then follow it with the scale. Now
let’s go a little further and add one note to
our chord. As you can see in Fig. 4, it’s the
same Hendrix Chord, but with the pinky
barred to add the high C note. Let’s call this
the “Super-Hendrix Chord.”
Can you hear how this chord matches
the sound of our new scale? It should sound
the same, because it is the same. The scale
version puts the notes in a tight, sequential
order, while the chord spreads the notes out
more. But in the end, we have all the same
notes. It might actually be more accurate
to call this “scale” an arpeggio because it’s
so similar in fingering and technique to
the pentatonic scale. I’m going to break the
rules and continue to think of it as a scale.
For easy reference, let’s call it the “Super-
Hendrix Scale.” I like the sound of that.
Let’s carry on.
Fig. 3
44 & oeoeoeoe ‹#
oeoeoeoe
oeoe#oenoe
oeoeoe# oen oeoeoeoe#
˙˙˙˙ ‹# ™™™™
oe
8
4
˙
7
6
7
8
7
6
7
8
8
5
7
5
6
5
7
5
7
6
7
8
8
4
0
Fig. 4
E7[äAE]
9fr
Fig. 5
13fr
Fig. 6
6fr
12344
Fig. 7
44 &
oe
oe
oeoe oe oe oeoe oe oeoeoe oe oeoeoe oeoeoe bn oe oeoeoe
6
oe#oenoe#oeoeoe
3
˙™
3
3
5
5
5
5
2
2
5
2
2
4
2
3
4
2
3
3
2
4
3
2
4
˙
&
00
0 16 15 16
oeoeoeoeoeoeoe n oeoeoe oe n oe oeoeoeoeoeoeoeoeoeoeoeoe ˙ Ó
15
15
16
6
6
6
6
17 15 17
14
17
14 17 14 17
13
17
13 17 13 17
15
17
15 17 15 17
15
17
