Hi Guys,
Today, a quick look at John McLaughlin’s “Pentatonic” guitar concepts for playing over the Coltrane Changes.
Although I am employing alternate picking guitar technique at quite a fast rate, these pentatonic’s simplify things enormously.
THE RHYTHMIC SIDE OF THINGS:
To keep the solo line tight, we will count in a basic manner,
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and
This way, you will know where you are in the bar and what chord you are playing over.
To begin with I use the B major pentatonic scale. Next, I employ a simple 2 finger pentatonic scale over D7 and GMaj7.
I then play the second part [same fingering] up a semitone and land on the note D for the EbMaj7 chord, counting 1 2 3 4 in preparation for the next chord.
For the first three chords I play what could be called “A Dorian Pentatonic”. But, I am not really thinking in that way. [I am just adding the F# note for the 3rd of D7]. This in turn creates a very simple and “Fluid” guitar fingering that is very common to most guitar players and hence easy to play.
On the F#7 chord I play an F#7 arpeggio that then resolves into an Eb minor arpeggio for the BMaj7 chord.
For then next part, I again employ a simple Pentatonic to get through the first three chords.
This Bb minor leaning works well because over the Bb7 chord it gives us the “Blue note”. Finally we use our A Dorian Pentatonic again to resolve to GMaj7 for our last three chords.
Here, I just use C#m pentatonic and F# Pentatonic to land on the D# to nail the change to the BMaj7 chord. Very simple and very common guitar fingering.
For the last part, I employ an Fm9 arpeggio and a C minor pentatonic scale that then goes up a semitone and repeats our C#m7 F#7 to Bmaj7 phrase.
But, this time we land on an F# for the 5th of BMaj7.
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