[MUSIC] So that was a pentatonic scale.

Now we're going to take

a look at a song that uses the pentatonic scale as a melody. Songs often use pieces
of scales as melody. Over some kind of harmony. Usually the harmony is some kind of
chord. Let's take a look at the chart for
this song. The name of this song is
the Blue Guitar Blues. This song is written in
what we call blues form, which is part of a great
American tradition of music. The song uses power cords. It uses quarter notes,
eighht notes,
half notes, and whole notes. All of which we've covered. Now on guitar in this
level, it's very difficult to play both the
melody and the chords at the same time. So there are a couple of different
ways we can get around that. The easiest of course is to get a friend
to play the chords while you play the melody, or you can play the chords
while your friend plays the melody. Another way,
which we're going to do right now, is I'm going to use a little device,
a pedal called a looper. And with this looper,
I'm going to play the chords first. And then after I have those recorded,
I'm going to go back and play the melody over those chords. So that way, we get
both melody and
harmony playing at the same time. Let's take another look at the chart. Now here we
see the first thing
that we should pay attention to is what we call the time signature. Now this is a
simple tune in 4 4. Most important thing for you to remember is that a tune in 4 4
has
four beats in each measure. We're going to start by
layering the chords. So, we have a G power chord, we have a C
power chord, and we have a D power chord. There are only three chords in the whole
song, that played in different places and they're held for
different lengths of time. We can see the slashes mean that the chord
is played for each of those beats. Now I'm going to use my looper, and
I'm going to start playing a chord. I'm going to play one downstroke for
each slash. Now I'm going to set my
metronome at 66 beats a minute. That's a good tempo. It'll give you enough time
to change to the next chord. [SOUND]
[SOUND] One, two, three, four and G, two, three, four. One ,two, three, four and G,
two, three. [SOUND] Four, and one, two, three, four. And C, two, three, four.
And one, two, three, four. And G, two, three, four. And one, two, three, four. And
D, two, three, four. And C, two, three, four. And G, two, three, four. And D, two,
three, four, and. So there I have the chords and
I've recorded for my song. And you can see that I
played a G power chord, G5. Then I changed to a C power chord,
right here. Then I changed back to a G power chord, G5. [MUSIC] Then I switched to
the d for four beats,
then I switched to the C for four beats. And now we're back at G. And then D.
[MUSIC] Now, we're going to talk about the melody. We have the chords recorded.
We're going to talk about the melody for
this song, Blue Guitar Blues. The melody is made up of notes
from a pentatonic scale. In this case it's notes from
the G-minor pentatonic scale. Now we've learned our
pentatonic scale previously and we're going to put that to good
use now by playing a melody. The melody often times for
blues songs is rooted in the pentatonic scale or the blue scale
which very close to pentatonic scale. Here we go one, two three, four and [MUSIC]
Let's take a look at the melody. If we look at the measure one, we'll see remember
that pentatonic
scale that we learned it sounded like. [MUSIC] Quick pentatonic review. [MUSIC] If
we look at the first measure,
it's actually just an ascending. [MUSIC] And descending minor pentaton. [MUSIC]
Landing on the G and
holding the G for four beats. That's a whole-note G. Play that again. [MUSIC] Now
if we look at measure three. It's actually a repetition of measure one. We actually
play exactly
the same thing one more time. [MUSIC] When we get to measure five we have
that C chord, the C five chord. It's a slightly different melody. Again, using
parts of the same scale. And ending again on a whole note, C. Sounds like this.
[SOUND] One more time. [SOUND] One, two Three, four. Measure seven, we go right
back to the original melody
that we played in measure one and two. Sounds like this again. [MUSIC] We get to
measure nine. Slightly different melody again. This one uses quarter notes. On an
F.
One, two, three, [MUSIC]. The quarter notes are followed by
a descending pentatonic scale. So it's like one, two, three, four [MUSIC]. The
following measure has
the same rhythmic pattern. This time, it's on a C. Two quarter not Cs followed by
a descending minor pentatonic scale. One, two, three, four. One more time. One,
two, three, four,
one, two, three, four. Now for measure 11 we go right
back to the original melody. [MUSIC] Which is part of the ascending and
descending scale only this time for measure 12 we go two half notes. The D held for
two beats, and
the F held for two beats. Sounds like this one, two, three,
four, and one, two, three, four, and. The whole melody again sounds like this. One,
two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three,
four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one,
two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, Two, three,
four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. [SOUND] And that's our blue
guitar blues. The melody's based on the pentatonic, and it uses the power chords
that we learned
from the chord section of the course.