Help with improvising over chord changes

[Walker]

Title changed to better reflect the question!


We are planning to cover Texas Eagle by Steve Earle AND I'm trying to learn some music theory and scales too. In E.

So rather than just banging the root / fifth on stuff like this, I want to improvise during the instrumental sections.


The chords the guys are playing are EEA and EBE,

[b]Question:[/b] what scale(s) should I riff seeing as the notes E, A and B are in E major, E minor, E minor pent and E blues scales?

Apologies if this is a daft question - I'm trying desperatly to get away from being a slave to tab!

Thanks!

Chris

Edited January 22, 2013 by Walker

[Walker]

Title changed to better reflect the question!

[OldG]

without hearing this....E,A and B is a blues I, IV ,V pattern - so try Em blues/pentatonic for a start.

[OldG]

nice little Em pent runway to play with in an easy to remember 3,2,3,2 format...


[url="http://[IMG]http://i1290.photobucket.com/albums/b538/tokai63/scalerun_zps655098ce.gif[/IMG]"]http://[IMG]http://i1290.photobucket.com/albums/b538/tokai63/scalerun_zps655098ce.gif[/IMG][/url]

Edited January 22, 2013 by OldG

[Dad3353]

Good morning, Chris...

You might like to try something a little more daring...

[url="http://www.musicarta.com/pentatonic-scales_2.html"]http://www.musicarta.com/pentatonic-scales_2.html[/url]

...scored for piano, with both treble and bass clef; it'll put you on the right track, and improve your reading no end. Cap..?

Hope this helps...

[Walker]

Thank you very much for your help with this.

That’ll give me something to play around with this evening.

So if I understand this correctly, if I devise a bass line using the Em Pentatonic scale, can I play it if they are strumming E, A or B or will I have to shift it with the chord changes and I would if I were doing the root/5[sup]th[/sup] thing?

[OldG]

Both... if it sounds right - do it. In the verses or if you want to 'support' certain parts of the song It does sound better to my ears to play the root on the change.

[Walker]

Thanks very much indeed - I'll experiment tonight.

[Doddy]

I don't have chance to listen to the tune, but if the chords are just E, A and B you can easily
play major arpeggios or scales over them. Even in a Blues, the chords are generally dominant
( I, III, V, bVII) so major will work over them-when playing a minor pentatonic over them the b3
of the scale is normally acting as the #9 of the chord,becauee the chord contains a major 3.

I think what will be better for you at this point would be to focus mire on the chords than try
to blanket them with a scale.In this case it's all in E major,but look at the chord tones-
E major-E, G#, B...A maj- A, C#, E...B maj....B, D#, F#

[Walker]

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1358867432' post='1946276']
I think what will be better for you at this point would be to focus mire on the chords than try
to blanket them with a scale.In this case it's all in E major,but look at the chord tones-
E major-E, G#, B...A maj- A, C#, E...B maj....B, D#, F#
[/quote]

Cheers Doddy - funnily enough, what you mention above is exactly where I am at the moment (I know I only mentioned root/5th, sorry), so I need to up my game a bit, hence the scales question. I had a fiddle last night and I'm starting to see how this all works. So thanks for the help everyone!

[muttley]

It won't do any harm to learn the Emaj scale from various positions. Generally speaking, a I/IV/V chord progression covers all the notes of the key scale...

[Guest bassman7755]

[quote name='OldG' timestamp='1358853264' post='1945934']
if it sounds right - do it.
[/quote]

When I was learning to improvise on guitar many years ago now, this was probably the single most useless piece of advise that people used to regularly give me. I'm not having a go at you by saying that, and I know the advice was well intentioned, but I feel that relative beginners need a much more focused approach unless they happened to be blessed with a naturally fantastic ear.

Of course most people even without musical training can tell whether something is "good" or "bad" but actually trying to compose a melody and being able to hear incremental degrees of goodness and badness and knowing how to steer towards the former in real time as you are actually playing takes a very highly developed ear and a good connection between ear and hand. These things take many years for most people to develop and musical structures such as chords and scales act as a foundation on which to build these things.

My advice to the OP is: start with the chord tones and expand on what you already do - use 3rds 7ths etc where applicable. Next try playing notes than are not in the chord (of the moment) but are still in the basic key of the song. Try to hear the difference between those chord tones and the non-chord tones and listen for the "unresolved" feeling of non chord notes.

If you want an exercise to take this to extremes: play through the whole chord sequence staying on the same note and listen to how that one note sounds different against each chord, now do that same exercise for all of the other 10 notes in the chromatic scale.

The secret to constructing any interesting melody (which is what a bassline is) is to play around with the tension levels by using chord and non chord tones - that is essentially music theory in one sentence.

To start with most people have to learn chord tones and scales and apply mechanical formulas to them to get good lines out of them, but [b]realise that this not the end goal[/b] - the end goal is use your ears more and the formulas less, but its a gradual process but one that will be faster if you start to deliberately listen for the tension and resolution that is inherent in any melody.

That is what I wished someone had told me 30 years ago instead of "if it sounds good then it is".

[GonzoBass]

Well put bassman.