PENTATONIC SCALES (4)

Pentatonic Riff in A Minor
with Two Improvisations

This riff accompanies Lesson Three of the Musicarta Pentatonic Scales series of free online piano lessons.

Please stay on the page and try the rhythmic build-up Practice Segments. You’re sure to get something out of it!

To get the most out of this free Musicarta module, you should click back up to the Pentatonic Scales home page for an overview of the material, and work through the series from there. You’ll learn of theory without really noticing and pick up some good riffing material along the way.

The Riff

• Pentatonic Riff in A Minor with Two Improvisations

Here’s what the riff sounds like:

Some ear training first

tonic, minor third, fourth, fifth, minor seventh

Look at random (darker) scale tones in the main octave one at a time see if you can sing them in your head. Then check your guess against the keyboard.

‘Doodle’ in A minor pentatonic. Wander up and down aimlessly, listening for a tune. Try to get your doodles more playing what you hear (in your head) than hearing what you play just by accident. (Don’t worry if it’s not working quite that way yet – it’s a lifetime’s work for most of us!)

The Rhythmic Build-up

PRACTICE SEGMENT 1

Here’s the first segment we’ll work on.

First, notice the instruction to use ‘swing quavers’ – also known as the ‘triplet quaver feel’ or, sometimes (in Musicarta), the ‘Humpty Dumpty rhythm’.

Now, without trying to get the rhythm right for now, find the notes according to the pentatonic shorthand (T, m7 etc.) and some fingering that will let you play them straight off as a row.

This practice segment deals with anticipation. Anticipation is pulling notes forward off their ‘square’ number beat (1, 2, 3 or 4) into the previous ‘and’/& quaver slots to give music a more funky sound. Listen to the audio clip to get the idea.

In our practice segment, the first phrase (first two bars) has no anticipation.

The second time (second two bars), beat 3 gets anticipated on beat 2’s ‘and’. Nothing plays on beat 3, so you see (3) in brackets in the counting.

The third time (last two bars), even the second bar beat 1 is anticipated.

The audio clip repeats each two-bar example. Keep working with it until you can take over from the fade and repeat indefinitely.

PRACTICE SEGMENT 2

Our riff doesn’t actually start on the first beat of the bar. There’s a ‘lead-in’ on beats ‘& 4’. Tap your foot and count out loud “One, two , three and four” as you copy the audio clip.

But there’s more! Sometimes there’s a lead-in and anticipation of next bar’s beat 1 as well.

When you can do both of these, practice alternating between the two:

PRACTICE SEGMENT 3

Now put the two types of lead-in with the tune from Segment 1:

Of course, you can play any pentatonic scale tones to that rhythm. That’s what you’ll start doing in the improvisations at the end of the riff.

PRACTICE SEGMENT 4

In the actual riff, the bass (left hand) sometimes plays along with the riff in the right hand, and sometimes it just supplies a thumping single note bass beat. On top of that, sometimes it follows the right hand lead-in anticipation, and sometimes it doesn’t. (Sounds more complicated than it is!)

This segment rehearses just the two types of lead-in with the bass-note left hand.

• Listen to the audio clip carefully until you can hear the difference between the left hand with anticipation and left hand without.

• Practice each type separately.

• Play along and take over as the clip fades.

Together-left-right analysis gives you the opportunity to think clearly about whether your hands play together, or whether just the left or just the right hand plays.

Slow yourself down enough to look at the TLR analysis. Tapping out the difficult bits to your own count on the case of your instrument or on your desktop is worth any amount of time bashing away trying to get the notes right on a trial-and-error basis.

When you can the together, right, left ‘events’ in order and in time, go back to the keyboard and put the notes into it.

This works! Try it!

PRACTICE SEGMENT 5

Your next practice segment rehearses the no-anticipation left hand with the right hand playing the riff proper.

Notice how the left hand notes follow the right hand up the scale tones.

PRACTICE SEGMENT 6

This segment rehearses both types of left hand lead-in with the proper ‘tune’.

PRACTICE SEGMENT 7

This segment rehearses an ending for the phrase we’ve been working on so far. Notice that the scale tones are different – T, m3 and 4 instead of 5, m7 and T.

Very syncopated! Beats 1, 2 and 3 get anticipated. Only count 4 actually has notes on the beat. If you count as you play, you won’t play anything as you say “One”, “Two” or “Three”.

Played straight, the music would look and sound like this:

You can hear how much the anticipation adds to the sound.

With the anticipated quavers left in, the written music looks like this:

It would sound like this:

The music looks very cluttered and sounds gummed up, so you take away the tied notes and get the Segment 7 performance as given.

PRACTICE SEGMENT 8

There is one more section which we haven’t covered in detail – bars 9 to 12. You apply the various anticipating techniques you’ve learned to this long descending line of pentatonic scale tones:

Once you’ve applied your anticipating techniques, this is what it ends up sounding like:

There’s anticipation at every opportunity! See if you give the ‘bare bones’ string the treatment without using the written music.

Performing the Riff

Here’s the audio file of the performance again:

This is where the Improvisations come in.

The Improvisations

The scale tones which form the main ‘rungs’ of the ‘ladder’ are found on beats 1 and 3, sometimes anticipated by a quaver. Here are the ‘bare bones’ of Improvisation 1:

Here is the same for Impro 2:

Rehearse these tones and then try to play the Improvisations by ear from the following audio track by applying the ‘profile’ from the main riff.

If you prefer to work from the manuscript (written-out music), the Improvisations are on pages 2 and 3 of the pdf you downloaded at the start of the module.

Improvising

You make your improvisations different by

• going further up or down, or going less far

• turning round to return on a different note

• not returning by step at all but just leaping back to the start

• trying to play something you half-remember but coming up with something completely different (the classic!)

… or any number of tiny variations on the practice segments which ‘make them your own’ and turn them into starting points for riffs on their own.

Ear-training samples

Sample 1

These are the actual scale tones used:

Sample 2

This is the ‘bare bones’ string of the next audio clip:

There is a lead in, so T is not the first note you hear – the first three notes are 5, m7, T.

Sample 3

Here’s a string which doesn’t find it’s way back to the starting point. These are the ‘bare bones’, no lead-in.

You might also like to revisit the ‘doodles’ in the first lesson in this series and see if they spark off any ideas.

Immediate results aren’t always the point. You might be listening to a piece of music a week or a month (or a year) down the line and find yourself thinking “That’s a minor pentatonic scale! I’m ‘seeing it’ in A minor… !” The penny sometimes takes a while to drop.

The next lesson in this series introduces two familiar-sounding semitones which regularly get squeezed into the pentatonic scale. They’re ’unofficial members’ which you’ll recognise instantly. They’ll make your pentatonic riffing sound totally professional and double the creative possibilities of the pentatonic scales you already know.

In the meantime take a break and have a look round Musicarta for more great free piano lessons online. Go to the Musicarta home page and browse the tabs on the left – these are index pages where you can learn about and access the various series of lessons.

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