
Guitar Scales
The following post talks about scales. If you really want to learn every major, minor and pentatonic scale for guitar (along with the chord-tone arpeggios), you’ll want to get my new ebook ‘Advanced Guitar Basics: Scales and Arpeggios’ (click the link for more!).
The Phrygian Dominant scale is kinda like the
Think of it like this: the first chord you get when you harmonise the Phrygian mode (i.e. the chord build off the root note) is a minor 7th chord. It has this formula:
1 b3 5 b7
…and a Dominant 7th chord has this formula:
1 3 4 b7
See the difference? The dominant 7th chord has a major third, where as the Phrygian mode has a minor third (or flat third). This is the clever part: if you could take the Phrygian mode and turn the minor third into a major third, you could play the scale over dominant 7th chords- because then both would have the same notes. Make sense?
So, to get the Phrygian Dominant scale, we take the Phrygian mode and raise the minor third (to make it a major third). Then we end up with this scale (starting from A on the 5th fret of the E string):
e -------------------------------------------------6--8--10--
B ---------------------------------------6--8--10------------
G -----------------------------5--8--9-----------------------
D --------------------5--7--8--------------------------------
A -----------5--7--8-----------------------------------------
E --5--6--9--------------------------------------------------
The formula for this scale is:
1 b2 3 4 5 b6 b7
…and so the notes in the above tab are:
A Bb C# D E F G
This means that the new scale has a B flat AND a C sharp in it (crazy, huh?). It also means that it’ll fit over a dominant 7 chord (i.e. the above scale starting on an A will fit over an A7 chord).