Pentatonic Substitutions, Part 2

The conclusion of our presentation of some musically useful and colorful applications of a familiar scale

LAST MONTH, IN Part 1 of this lesson, we looked at the interrelationships between pentatonic scales and the major and natural minor scales and saw how major and minor pentatonics can be repurposed and substituted over various tonal centers to create fresh-sounding melodic ideas that have a familiar feel under your fingers, due to the scale’s “open” structure and easily visualized fretboard shapes. In this second and final installment, we’ll delve into some more appealing applications of this five-note scale and look at ways that it can be used in relative modal tonalities.

MODAL IMPLICATIONS

It stands to reason that if specific pentatonic scales can be used to represent all the notes of a major and natural minor scale, then pentatonic patterns can be called