How to Solo in ANY KEY! [Minor and Major]

[00:00:00]When I make videos about scale shapes, I often get asked how they can be used in other keys, especially the difference between minor and major. So, I want to explain in the simplest way I can how you can solo in any key. Let's go straight into a solo using the A minor pentatonic, and I want to ask you to pay particular attention how it starts off really dark and minor sounding in the first half, but then in the second half it gets brighter and major sounding.

[00:00:27]But, the scale pattern I'm using, and broadly the licks, remain the same.

[00:00:35]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Hopefully, you're about to discover this isn't as complex as it needs to be. But, to know which scale to use when, firstly, we need to understand two really important things. Firstly, every minor key has a major key with the exact same notes. So, here's an A minor scale.

[00:01:14]It's all the white notes on a piano with no sharps or flats. And then below it, a C major scale. You'll see they share the exact same sequence of notes, but with a different starting point. And then here's E minor, which shares the exact same notes as G major, just a different start point. These are known as relative minor and major keys, and even if you know no theory, you've probably noticed that, for example, songs with an E minor chord generally feature a G chord as well. So, the distinction between minor and major, therefore, isn't necessarily which notes are used, but where the focus point, or root note, is. Then, secondly, every key has three major chords and three minor chords. Here they are shown for each of the five main keys we use on guitar. Now, songs do use additional chords from outside the key, but generally, you'll see these shown here grouped together.

[00:02:14]Focusing on minor chords gives a darker sound, whereas major chords give a brighter sound. Most songs combine both for light and shade. Probably 75% of the time, the first chord of a song tells you the key, and 90% of the time, the very last chord will tell you the key.

[00:02:32]Now, let's get into practicalities, and let's look at the first half of that solo. The chords are A minor to D minor to E minor and resolving back to A minor. So, it's like a 1-4-5-1 in A minor, super dark, super minor sounding.

[00:02:51]>> [music] [music] >> So, in the solo, I was using the A minor pentatonic in the first position, which looks like this: 5 and 8 on the low E, >> [music] >> 5 and 7 on the A, 5 and 7 on the D, 5 and 7 on the G, then 5 and 8 on the B, and 5 and 8 on the high E.

[00:03:25]All together.

[00:03:27]>> [music] [music] >> Now, you probably know this shape already, but how do we know this is an A minor scale? Well, it starts on this A here, >> [music] >> on the fifth fret, and you'll notice the notes fit perfectly around this A minor barre chord here. So, this is how we understand where [music] to play this shape for A minor. But importantly, to bring out the dark minor character of this scale, I'm targeting this minor root note of A. Now, we have three A's within this pentatonic pattern. Firstly, >> [music] >> here at the seventh fret on the D string, this is an A, and this was the target for my first lick.

[00:04:12]And you can immediately hear by targeting that note, it fits perfectly over that A minor chord.

[00:04:18]>> [music] >> Then we already know that the lowest note here, fifth fret on the low E, is an A. So, that was the target for my second lick.

[00:04:31]And then again, fifth fret on the high E, that's also an A. So, I came back up to the middle and then >> [music] >> play the lick which finished up hitting that highest A there.

[00:04:43]One other thing you'll notice is bending this note here at the seventh fret of the G string. I'm doing that often, and this is probably the most important bend.

[00:04:55]And it works really well in both minor and major keys, as we'll see shortly.

[00:05:03]>> [music] >> But now let's see how this exact same pattern can be used to solo in a major key. So, the chords are shifting to C to F to G and back to C. So, it's a 1-4-5-1 in C major now. But, the licks are basically the same as in A minor.

[00:05:29]>> [music] >> We've already discussed how A minor and C major have exactly the same notes. So, this exact same A minor shape is also the C major pentatonic.

[00:05:51]Whilst the first note this A here at the fifth fret tells us which minor key the shape works for, the second note >> [music] >> here at the eighth fret tells us which major key it works for. In this case, a C [laughter] and here's our C major [music] barcode, which also starts at the eighth fret. So, this exact same shape works for A minor and C major.

[00:06:13]Even if I just play the scale starting at this note, >> [music] >> you immediately hear it sounds much brighter.

[00:06:24]Now, to transform this from a dark sounding minor scale to a bright sounding major, all we need to do is target the major root note of C at the end of our licks.

[00:06:37]Just like we had three A's, we also have three C's. Here at the eighth from the low E, the fifth on the G, >> [music] >> and then again, the eighth on the high E.

[00:06:49]Now, before where the licks were landing on that minor root note of A, this time we can just adjust to land on a C and suddenly we have a bright major sound.

[00:06:59]So, the first lick for example, >> [music] >> in A minor, I was landing on this A here on the seventh fret of the D string.

[00:07:07]Same lick, but staying on this C, >> [music] >> fifth fret on the G string.

[00:07:14]Suddenly it sounds much brighter and fits with the C [music] major sound.

[00:07:20]And then you saw me target the low C, eighth fret of the low E string.

[00:07:26]And then later on, landing on this high C at the eighth fret on the high E string. So, now let's hear the minor and major progressions together and listen out for that change from the dark sound to the brighter sound and how I target the A's and the C's to fit the flavor.

[00:08:00]>> [music] [music] >> What we're seeing here is so common in songs, maybe starting the verse in a minor key and moving to the major for the chorus or vice versa.

[00:08:19]So, now we know how to manage minor to major, let's see how this works in another key. Let's take a look at E minor, and you may already know that this first position pentatonic shape works in E minor when we start here at the 12th fret where [music] we find the E minor barre chord shape.

[00:08:40]>> [music] >> The exact same shape, but now starting on the 12th fret gives us E minor, and just like before, we have our three minor root notes of E. Firstly, here, the first note, 12th fret on the low E string, then here in the middle at the 14th fret of the D string, and then our high E at the 12th fret on the high E string.

[00:09:04]And now we can play the same licks as before, targeting those notes.

[00:09:09]There we're targeting that middle one.

[00:09:13]Target the low one and ending up on that high E there.

[00:09:19]Then in this same position, we also have G major, because as we saw before, the second note of the pattern tells us which major key it works for. So, >> [music] >> E was the first note, our minor root note, the second note here at the 15th fret is a G, so this is also going to work perfectly for G major. Now we have three G's to target here as well, so there's our first one, 15th fret on the low E, then also 12th on the G string, and then again 15th on the high E. And just like before, landing on a G instead of an E is going to make this scale sound bright and major-y. So landing on an E dark minor, landing on a G bright major.

[00:10:07]>> [music] >> So now the same backing track as before, but transposed.

[00:10:13]>> [music] [music] [music] >> So here's [music] a graphic with the five main keys we use for guitar. It shows the relative major and minor, and then which fret we can start out with our pentatonic shape, and then the three major and three minor chords in each key. Other keys not shown, you can probably work out just by shifting up or down one fret from the closest one here.

[00:10:56]I hope this gives you confidence to know where to solo, but let's just look at one final example to really embed the concept. What about A major then? Well, as a major key, we know we need to look for where the second note of our pentatonic pattern is an A. So we've already seen that this note >> [music] >> the fifth fret on the low E is an A, and in A minor this was the first note of our pattern. So what happens when we make it the second note?

[00:11:24]So let's put our little finger on it, and then >> [music] >> the shape starts here at the second fret on the low E, which is an F sharp. So, we have starting on the second fret F sharp minor and A major. So, let's just look at those licks quickly.

[00:11:43]Landing on the F sharp there.

[00:11:45]It fits perfectly [music] with F sharp minor.

[00:11:49]Landing on the A fits perfectly with A major.

[00:12:06]>> [music] >> So, thanks for watching and if you want to see some more on this topic with some slightly more sophisticated chord progressions, then click here.