Stop playing the same pentatonic patterns.....add this 1 note! (feat. Ryan Devlin)

Today we're going to be talking about one of the most exciting, but also one of the most misunderstood areas of jazz improvisation: playing outside of the chord changes. Every example you'll hear today comes from our 30-day outside improvisation bootcamp. In this course, you'll find approach notes and enclosure for targeting both inside and outside tones, pentatonic systems for creating modern tension and color, melodic minor language, including altered, diminished, augmented, and whole tone sounds, chord substitutions, and harmonic movement for advanced improvisation. If you want to develop the ability to start phrases outside of the chord changes, control your tension, and resolve with authority, this course is for you.

Plus, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video Stop playing the same pentatonic patterns.....add this 1 note! (feat. Ryan Devlin) if you want to hear Ryan play through anything we talk about today.

Let’s get playing!

We’re going to look at how we can add one note to a pentatonic scale to make it a hexatonic scale. And normally when we play hexatonic scales, it's for triad pairs, right? We have six notes that are laid out in a scale. 

What we’re talking about today is really having an altered pentatonic and then adding one note as you continue through a solo. The direct example of this is John Coltrane's song called "Vigil" with Elvin Jones. It's a really cool pentatonic scale. It's basically a minor pentatonic scale with a b5 instead of a 4, but he adds the b9 as the solo and the melody continue. 

So he'll add Ab in there as the solo continues, which is a really cool technique that you can do over modal tunes or blues. We’re taking an altered minor pentatonic or any kind of minor pentatonic and adding one note to make it a hexatonic and gaining a new tension note or new color tone. 

The Coltrane one is just one example of doing this. Another example would be taking a minor pentatonic—let's just say regular Dm pentatonic...

and maybe we want to add in C#. We can add in C# as a color tone, and then that becomes a hexatonic scale. But it’s easier to think about it as the bare bones of a pentatonic—so a five-note scale—that we’re then adding a sixth note and making it a hexatonic scale later on in the solo. 

So we're going to have the pentatonic by Coltrane written out in all 12 keys, which is basically a b5 minor pentatonic or a half diminished pentatonic. We could call it 1, 3, b5, 5, 7, 1, and then we add in Ab to make it a b9/b5 hexatonic. There's our scale. 

Now this is going to work over a lot of different chords. You can make this work over G7alt, Abmaj7#11, Bbm7, etc. Let’s play through all those b9/b5 hexatonic scales, and then we're going to work on improvising over a blues where we develop our solo with that minor pentatonic and adding a sixth note as we continue through. 

Then we’ll play it over Billy's Bounce in F blues when we continue to develop it and add that sixth note as we go through the solo. 

Well that’s all we have for today, and if you haven’t already checked out our accompanying YouTube video Stop playing the same pentatonic patterns.....add this 1 note! (feat. Ryan Devlin), you can hear how Ryan played through these examples.

And for even more on this topic, make sure to check out our 30-Day Outside Improvisation Bootcamp.

We’ll see you next time!