Modes from the Pentatonic Scale

 I would suggest reading other posts in this series that explain Scales and Modes before going further with this post.

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This is taken from a previous post:-

Learning Modes from the Pentatonic Scale

As the name suggests the Pentatonic Scale is made up of 5 notes. Depending on whether you are looking at the Major or Minor Pentatonic Scale, will depend on the scale degrees used in that scale. 

  The Major Pentatonic scale is made up of the 1st - Major 2nd- Major 3rd- Perfect 5th - Major 6th, 

 

The Minor Pentatonic scale constitutes the 1st - minor 3rd - Perfect 4th - Perfect 5th - minor 7th, and you can see a comparison between both scales below. 

 

 

 The obvious thing to say about this is that shape 1 is followed by shape 2, etc. Also, if you look closely, you can see how the shapes match each other as they move along the fretboard, i.e. shape 1 of the Minor Pentatonic is the same as shape 5 of the Major Pentatonic. The only thing that is changing is the tonic, or root note. 

Modes from the pentatonic scale

So, how, you may ask can we turn these shapes into the relevant modes. If you think about major scales for a moment and we know that the major scale, which is also the Ionian Mode, requires 7 notes, starting at the root note, to bring the scale back to the root note (detailed in red) - obviously an octave higher, then we only have to add 2 notes to the pentatonic scale (or shape). Similarly, if we look at the minor pentatonic scale, we should only have to add 2 notes to turn the scale into a minor scale, or Mode.

                                                                       Major Pentatonic Position 1

OK from the diagram above we need to only add 2 notes to make the first mode - the Ionian Mode. The notes we need to add are the perfect 4th and the major 7th. It now looks like this:-

Major Scale

So we can see that before every root note there is going to be a note - the major 7th, and after every major 3rd note is another note - the perfect 4th. 

I would like to just add a little point here which I think will help a lot of people. If you look at the diagram below you can see it's the 5th position of the major pentatonic scale. Please note that there are 2 seperate 'blocks' of notes. Two strings of 3 frets (coloured red) and 3 strings of 2 frets (coloured green). Please take into account that there are 2 E strings on a guitar. 

  Major Pentatonic Position 5

If you look closely at the diagram you can see that the root note for major guitar shapes are on the highest note of  the 3 fret block, and, next to highest on the 2 fret block. Just let this  sink in for a second before you move forward. Now think of where the extra notes are going. Remember that these root notes will not change so it iw ll give you an anchor point. Also remember that these pentatonic shapes are just the skeleton where you can place the extra notes, again the pentatonic shapes, once remembered, will remain the same. In other words, only the 4th and 7th notes are going to change - that's 2 notes!!

Pentatonic position 5 and 1 together 

Full Ionian Scale - Added Notes

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Other Major Modes 

The other Major Modes are the Lydian Mode and the Mixolydian Mode. The Lydian Mode is characterized by a sharpened 4th note and the Mixolydian Mode by a flattened 7th note. They would look like this:-

Lydian Mode -

Pentatonic position 5 and 1 together 

Full Lydian Scale - Added Notes

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Mixolydian Mode -

I am pretty sure that by now you will see how this is working.

Minor Modes 

There are 3 minor modes to consider. These are the Dorian, Phrygian and Aeolian Modes. Each has a distinctive feel and was discussed previously in a seperate article. 

In a similar way to what has been discussed so far, adding 2 notes to a minor pentatonic scale will give you the relevant mode.

Above is an illustration of the 1st and 5th shape Minor Pentatonic Scale.

The minor pentatonic scale is made up of the 1st, flat 3rd, perfect 4th, perfect 5th and the flat 7th note of the associated scale. 

Let's take a look at the Dorian Mode and it's shape with added notes, which are the major 2nd and major 6th notes. Below will give you an idea of this concept.

Dorian Mode -

Phrygian Mode -

Now the Phrygian Mode and it's shape with added notes, which are the minor 2nd and minor 6th notes, look at this !!

Aeolian Mode -

The Aeolian Mode uses the Pentatonic Minor Shape as a framework and ads the notes of major 2nd and flat 6th to the scale, thus:-

SUMMARY

Ok let's just go over what has been discussed here. If we take the 'normal' starting Major Scale - you know, the doh, ray, me, fah, etc. scale and used each note of the scale as a new starting point for a one octave scale, we get a 'mode'. Each of these Modes are described above - 3 Major Modes and 3 Minor Modes. The last Mode which we haven't looked at is called the Locrian Mode, this is a Diminished Mode and is relatively rarely used,hence we focus on the Major and Minor Modes. 

How to Practice these Modes.

The way I was told to practice these Modes are as follows:-

Take your Major scale (the doh, ray, me, one) and play this in position (shape) 1 until it becomes second nature. This might take a week, a month, a year. Don't worry if it takes ages, time is going to pass anyway so if you don't practice, in a year you still won't know it, if you practice, in a year you may know it, or you will be further on than now!! 

The scale you are practicing is the Ionian Mode. If you now practice the 5th shape, you will notice that you are 3 frets lower, so not only are you practicing shape 5 of the Ionian Scale, you are also practicing the 1st shape of the Aeolian Scale. However, you must remember that the root note is different, this is very important. If you don't remember this, you could go to hell... or your friends will never speak to you again!! You will end up in musical purgatory 

If you do this for each of the Major Scales, this will equate to a relevant Minor Scale i.e. 

Ionian - Aeolian

Lydian - Dorian

Mixolydian - Phrygian

I would also suggest that once you have the Ionian Scale under your fingers, to then sharpen the 4th and you can now play the Lydian. you will only have to concentrate on one note. Similarly, with the Mixolydian Mode, play your Ionian Mode and then when you flatten the 7th, you are now playing the Mixolydian Mode. And remembering what I have just said, you will also be playing the associated minor Modes.

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