 Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson, we are basically going to do a couple of things. It's going to be a little bit of theory and a little bit of application of course, but most of it is theory and most of it is a way of understanding how chords and scales work together, hopefully from a new perspective, maybe for those of you who've just looked at building chords one way. So the traditional way of forming chords from a scale would be, you know, you take a D major and then you have all its available chords. Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished, major. So all of those chords came from the parent scale, in this case the D major scale. Now what if I told you that this whole equation could be reversed, the whole thing could be flipped over its head by saying that the chord will be the focal point of my composition. Maybe I could play this chord, which is a C major 7th, I will tell you all this shortly. And maybe we should find a couple of scales or more than a couple of scales which work well with this chord. Maybe, or maybe if I take a dominant 7th chord maybe another scale, or maybe some other, right? So depending on the chord, so now if I have this chord, you have a scale which goes with that chord, but then you could have quite a few scales. So in this lesson I'm going to limit our study of chord scales to just one type of scale or rather two types of scales which both have one thing in common that they have five notes. So what do we call five note scales? Pentatonic scales. So we have the major pentatonic scales and the minor pentatonic scales. Let's first look at the formation of the scales. So in this lesson we look at the formation of all this stuff, how to form the scales very quickly, how to form the more fancy chords which I call as 7th chords. Then we are going to start doing the chord scale relationship. Chords scales work with each chord and then a few tricks of how to use the pentatonic scale over all of these chords to not only get a sound which works but also get a sound which is very hopefully sophisticated or as people say very jazzy in nature, right? So let's get cracking right away. Before we do, if you haven't subscribed, if you haven't hit that bell, go over and do the same and the lesson is supplemented with a good number of notes for all these theory and technical things. There's notation, there's a lot of diagrams which are going to be shared with you. To get that, just go over to our Patreon, it's $5 a month so you get your hands on pretty much everything we'll ever do on YouTube in the writing notes, if there's a backing track, if there's notation or whatever it may be, it will be there on the Patreon page. Head over there and it'll be great to have your support as well for our channel. Let's get cracking, right? So first off, let's figure out how to get the pentatonic scales going. Major pentatonic is 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 which is the same as 1, 1, 6, 5, 3, 2, 1. Major pentatonic. Saregapadasha, sadapagresa and to add flavor to the pentatonic, usually what people do, especially in a bluesy and jazzy context, you add the flat 3 as a passing note, like Saregapadasha, that's the pentatonic. Maybe on another video I'll show you how to do fingering for this because it can be a bit tricky if you go up and down the board. So let's build 3 pentatonic scales and I would encourage you to do the rest. So for C, it'll be C, D, E, G, A, C, high C, C, A, G, E, D, C. Got it? Okay, coming to D and a simple way to remember pentatonic formation is if you know your major scale, just knock off the 4 and the 7. Job done. Knock off the 4 and the 7. So if I'm on D, D, 1, 2, 3, knock off the 4 which is G, go to the 5. 6, don't want 7. Octave. So also what I kind of call as like the anything goes scale. You can use it for so many chords, so it kind of works for everything. So that's D major pentatonic. Let's also do a flat scale major pentatonic, E flat, E flat, can start with your index finger. E flat, F, G, B flat, C, E flat, E flat, C, B flat, G, F, E flat. See my fingers. Maybe not the ring there. Middle. It's easy to cross there. When you come back, I guess ring is okay. D, C. Figure out where to cross the thumb and for the flat scales, don't start with your thumb. Otherwise you'll have a huge trap there. Impossible. It's like the jail being given to your middle finger there. So index and also be acquainted with the flat 3. We have it. Okay. Coming to minor pentatonics. Now minor pentatonics have the formula. One, three flat, four, five, seven flat, octave. Also derived from major pentatonics. The cousins are the major pentatonics. So a bit more aggressive. And if you add the blues note, which is the tritone or the flat five makes it a lot more spicy. So C minor pentatone, one, three flat, four, five, seven flat. Octave, D minor pentatone. Okay. E flat minor pentatone. You can also build intervals with them and a quick tip. F sharp major pentatone has all your black notes on the keyboard. That's your F sharp major pentatonic. If you'd like to have some fun doing that or play some of the old video game music which was there in the 90s at least where I used to play video games. It's quite cool. And you're just using the black notes. Or if you start with the E flat, you get the minor version, right? You'll find a lot of artists just composing on the black scales, like on these pentatonics. Like you take Stevie Wonder. Some of his greatest songs are on E flat. So just some information for you. F sharp major pentatone, all black notes. E flat minor pentatone, all black notes. So that's about the two scales which we are going to learn for the lesson. Pentatonics major minor with that blue note here and there. Let's now look at the chords which I'd like to use for this chapter, which are the seventh chords. I'm only going to do three of them for today's lesson. The major seventh, the minor seventh and the dominant seventh. And the expectation from the lesson would be, your left hand will probably be holding the major seventh chord and the right hand is going to explore a scale of which will work over it. Like the pentatonic. Some pentatonic will need to happen in the right hand over your own improvised melody. I'm not going to show you any melody per se. It's just how you adapt to that chord. It's a very simple question if you think about it. You see a chord chart which has a chord at a given point in time. And you just ask yourself what scale goes with that chord. Now that seems a bit absurd sometimes, but it is true. You can have a unique scale for every chord. This is where people also look at the subject of modes. Now we have done a lot of lessons, theory lessons on modes, seventh chords, cadences and the like. And most of those need to be watched by you. And a lot of advanced topics have already been covered. Also we've done an entire chapter on blues music. So that will also be a great foundation for things like jazz which I plan to cover in the future lessons. So major sevenths again, let me show you with respect to C. I'm going to teach you C, D and also E flat. These are the roots I've chosen for the class. Why only do one root, right? So major seventh is nothing but root. Third, fifth, major seventh, saga pani. So the third is a major third. Fifth, seventh, minor seventh now. C, E flat, G, B flat, that's a minor seventh. Dominant seventh, one, three normal, major three. Perfect fifth, dominant seventh. So major seventh, minor seventh, dominant seventh. Coming to D, D major plus seventh. So if you know D major it's quite easy. You just add the C sharp, D minor with a minor seventh. Then D major with a dominant. Okay that's your D root, major seventh, minor seventh, dominant seventh. Now coming to the E flat root. Major, major seventh, minor seventh and the dominant seventh. So those are the chords which are being used for the lesson. Okay, so now coming to the general chord scale relationship. How do, I mean what scale do you play for each chord? Before I actually show you the point of today's lesson which are on how you can use the pentatonic scales for the improvisation. Let's look at some bigger parent scales first just to give you some initial idea of what we're trying to gain in this lesson. Right, so if I take the major seventh chord let me show you demonstrate on C major seventh which is here. Now if you look at it a scale which can be built through this obviously four notes are known which is, it's a given. Your scale will have the same notes as the underlying supporting chord. But this is just the root, the third, the fifth and the major seventh. So you've committed to the one, the three, the five and the seven but what about the others which is the two? Also what we call is nine. If you played along with the seventh chord, that's D then you have the four which is in the C major. It's F but F just doesn't sound so nice. It sounds a bit dissonant because there's a tritone created between B and F and also C and B are very close to each other in isolation. So instead of that to avoid that dissonance people tend to like F sharp. As you can see it's a very, very normal relaxing sound. Even though it is a tritone by nature, if I expose it, it's a horror movie but if I played with the major seventh, okay, you can do, this is what we call as the, well, sharp four or more correctly sharp eleven. This will be the nine and that'll also be your 13 which is the six. If you think about it, if you play C major, C major seventh just with the, you compose a melody with just the chord notes, sounds nice but when you bring in that, when you bring in the other notes which we call as tensions which is the nine, eleven sharp, thirteen or six natural starts giving you that very colorful or that jazzy flavor. So a great scale which works over the major seventh chord would be the Lydian scale provides on that and that's what I'm going to show you with the pentatonics. We are very quickly going to see how just by knowing those scales really well you can improvise nicely. Okay, coming to the minor seventh chord. So before that major seventh, what scale generally should be within your radar? The Lydian scale which is the major with a sharpened fourth. We don't call it flat five because then the five would be removed, right? Those work in some other scales. Sharp four because the four has been defeated. There's no F. It sounds a bit, as you can rightly hear, I guess, sounds a bit wrong or a bit weird. So that sounds usable. That's your Lydian sound or the sharp four sound. Now what do we do when we address a minor seventh chord? This is the sound of the minor. So the scale which works really well over this again. You can build your scale with the chord tones first. Which is your C, E flat, G, B flat. Then you have your nine. Then you have normal eleven. That sounds a bit weird, right? So this sounds very nice and then the flat six doesn't sound good but the normal six sounds great. So that and flat seven. So flat three, natural six, flat seven. That's what we call as the Dorian scale. So if you highlight the nines and the eleven and the thirteen, get a very sophisticated jazzy kind of sound. So it's good to know not just the scale but which notes of the scale sound consonant and which are the ones which sound colorful or what we call as the jazz tensions which are the nine, the eleven and the thirteen. So that's for your minor seventh bass. You see how the scale came from the chord, didn't it? Now coming to the dominant seventh. So the dominant seventh is extremely cool because it allows for a lot of stuff. So at the bare minimum you could build a scale which has these notes and the nine, eleven, thirteen. You can do that. So if I play the scale it becomes what we call as the Mixo or the Mixolydian scale. Amazing, it works really well as a scale over that chord but you can also consider intervals like the flat nine. Sounds quite nice. You could even consider the sharp nine. You can even consider the sharp four or the sharp eleven or the flat thirteen or the augmented fifth. So you can build a lot of scales. You can go that's a sharp four, sharp five. That's a Lydian augmented scale which is really nice. You can just do Lydian with a flat seven. It's a Lydian dominant scale. You can add all those weird altered notes as they call it and build a scale with all that. Definitely I'm diverting a bit so more on these altered scales and all that definitely in another lesson and do leave your suggestions because we've not done a lot of lessons on jazz and a bit more advanced theory. So if you have any suggestions on this front do leave them in the comments. It'll be great. So this is about the chords, the scales and the relationship between the scale and the chord. Now coming to the actual piano trick or the piano compositional tool which I have for you in this lesson which is using the two pentatonic scales in its simplest form the major and the minor scale over these three chords and let's come up with as cool music as we possibly can. Let's move on. So if I'm on C major seventh the more normal sound which you'd want to go with and mind you we are only going to use pentatonic scales for this entire lesson or rest of the lesson. So the pentatonic scale for C major seventh would be C major pentat. We've written that down. Works really well. But the more jazzier option when dealing with a chord would be to play a pentatonic scale but starting on another interval or formed from another interval of the chord. So the first opportunity you can do is take the C major seventh and ask yourself what is the perfect fifth of C. You'll realize the perfect fifth of C is G. C, D, E, F, G, C, G and now play G major pentatonic in all its glory. So if there's a chord which you see C major C major seventh the initial habit for most musicians who've come up from a pop rock culture would be okay I see a C major printed there. Let me jam on the major pentatonic. It's a very common sound. Sounds great but if you want something different you can just say okay that guy is playing C major. What shall I do instead to make it more colourful? Go up a fifth. Go to G. It works completely fine and it's part of the bigger picture scale because it has G and now I'm giving you some of the colours. That's the 13th, 7th, 9th of course chord tones. That's G, A, B, D, E, G, G, E, D, B, A, G that's your pentatonic G scale. If you want something even more jazzy or more colourful you can start just tell yourself okay C major 7th is my chord. Move up a two. Move up two steps to the major interval major second interval. What is two from C? D and now jam on the D major pentatonic. This will be very, very colourful. It gives you that Lydian note. You could kind of wander to a point that you may not even like playing C anymore in your melody. That will be quite cool. Okay so then same story if you do D major pentatonic. What are the relationships now? D major pentatonic works great. But then what did I tell you? You can move to a fifth. After doing the fifth you can also move up a major second which will be E and then you play the E major pentatonic scale giving you that Lydian flavour. So a lot of options there. You have three scales to play over this one chord D major 7th. Now E flat major 7th let's do one more. E flat major 7th obviously E flat major pentat works. You could also look at up 5, perfect 5th. So you need to map out all your pentatonic scales very important and figure out how to play them also on the piano. The fingers are very important in that in that regard. So go up a 5th you get B flat major pentat then go up a 2nd you get the Lydian over the E flat. The good thing about thinking that way is that pentatonic is just 5 notes. So it's a simple memory tool like it's just 5 notes. And if you just say 5 notes but you skip up to and play the pentatonic from the major second and immediately it just gives you that sophisticated sound. So that's what you do over a major 7th chord. Let's now do the same drill a little bit more quickly I guess since you've kind of got the drill over the minor 7th chord. So C minor 7th. So the same equation if you want something normal just play the normal minor pentatonic C minor pentat. If you want something more colourful or more jazzy tell yourself I want to play some other minor pentatonic scales again separated by a perfect 5th. So you go to G and play G minor pentat which gives you all those a few jazzy intervals but may not be the 13 which you'll get from the other one. G minor pentat could also start from the second as we did for the major 7th chord as well right. All the colours are there 9, 11, 5 of course 13 So C minor has those 3 scales C minor pentat then you have G and D Let's move on to the next one very quickly D minor pentat What are the scales? The obvious the namesake scale then go up a 5, what is a 5? A Then go up a 2 E minor pentat So D minor pentat A minor pentat D minor pentat K Now coming to E flat E flat minor 7th in my left hand and I go normal E flat minor pentat all the black notes then you go up a 5th D flat or you go up a 2 and the minor pentat from the 2 So that's about the minor 7th chord Let's now move over to the last chord for this lesson the dominant 7th chord The dominant 7th chord has quite a few options You have this normal sound as I'm calling it You have a jazzy sound and you also have a very altered sound like a sound which is like it's coming from somewhere else So let's just try and build all the 3 over the dominant chord The dominant chord is a very powerful chord You can use all your intervals over that So this is C7th First off There's something very interesting here You can do C major pentatonic works quite well But there's something very funny You can even play C minor pentatonic So over a dominant 7th chord you can perhaps play C major pentat as well as C minor pentat C minor gives you more of the bluesy vibe So that's a dominant It's quite cool isn't it So whenever you see a dominant 7th You get used to that E flat over and That's the funny part If you isolate the two notes Sounds horrific But now it sounds extremely usable So Major context Major pentatonic context Minor Bluesy If you want some of those jazzier intervals Remember for the dominant 7th Don't go up a 5th Go up a 4th Go up a perfect 4th And play the major pentat from the 4th What is the 4th from C F It's a very brightish sound You get yourself the 11th 13th And the 9th So it's quite colorful There's another thing you could consider This will be the final tip I want to make in this lesson Where you go up a tritone From the C Even that seems to work So if you go It's an acquired taste And what will make it sound even better Would be to remove the 5th From your chord And make it either a flat 5 Or a sharp 5 So G when you flat the 5 It becomes F sharp Now it kind of works Or sharpen the G to A flat So this is C 7th With a sharp 11 Or you're flattening the 5th This is the same C 7th With a sharp 5 Or an augmented 7th So if you do those chords Then it creates this altered sound As they call it Altered sounds are the usage of the altered intervals Namely the flat 9 The sharp 9 The flat 5 Or sharp 4 Flat 13 And of course the flat 7 So look at your F sharp Major pentatonic It clearly gives you All those altered notes So instead of maybe playing the full on altered scale You could consider to play Just the Pentatonic major So let's revise everything on the dominant 7th again So the dominant 7th chord Play the namesake Major Penta and the minor pentatonic They both work Minor pentatonic That bluesy edge Which you get Then something more jazzy Would mean go up to the F Which is the 4 Or alter your chord By removing the 5th play Something like a flat 5 or a sharp 5 You know And go up a tritone And play the major pentatonic from the tritone Tritone of C is F sharp So we've also prepared a nice chart for you To see how you can climb your intervals In the chart I've put the major 2nd Of everything I've put the perfect 5th of everything The 4th is also there And the tritone will also be there So that should help you navigate You can also look at the circle of 5ths If you want to remember Your intervals better But you can start with the chart which we have printed for you Available on our patreon page Which you can head over And not only get that You'll get the entire notes from this particular lesson So the writing work is a little bit Deep for this lesson You need to write a bit more But that helps you plan So by writing everything Shaping out all your scales It will help you now navigate The tension of this lesson is Whenever you look at a chord You're looking at C minor 7th And you should immediately have an idea Of what to do In this case I moved up a 5th to play G minor pentatonic Or I'm E flat minor 7th What shall I do? Maybe F minor pentatonic Or maybe I'll I'll now vamp on D major pentatonic Move up a 2 Okay Or maybe something dominant Go up a 4 Or maybe alter one of those things And go up a tritone Why did I do B flat? Because B flat is the tritone from E So a little bit of writing is needed Otherwise I don't think you'll be able to Visualize it immediately Get a grip on your pentatonic scales Get a grip on your major 7th Minor 7th, dominant 7th chords If you're having any doubts Regarding any of this Do leave us a comment And I will get to it and consider a future Lesson on these Rather more difficult subjects Right and thanks again For watching the video thus far However if you consider yourself A beginner you can always consider Either a piano foundation course Where we have videos Which are in our members only Directory Which is them with a monthly subscription Or if you'd like to learn With me or with any of our Other faculty at Nathaniel For vocals, violin, bass or whatever You can fill up the form Which is in the description And you can join one of our In-person virtual courses Where you'll be given regular assignments And a lot of things to help you grow And there's always Patreon As I mentioned earlier And as always don't forget To like the video it really helps the video do well So consider giving it a like Leave us a comment with anything Something positive Or some suggestion you might have Or any feedback from the video And don't forget to subscribe If you haven't already And hit that bell icon So that you get notified For anything we do in the future Right guys thanks again for watching This is Jason from Nathaniel, cheers