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Eb Progresssion

Time/size: 6 mins 18 secs/8.9mb. 80 beats per minute/bpm

Rock backing track: Here is a backing track in the key of Eb.

Backing track instruments: electric guitar, fretless bass and drums.

Progression: Once again we are using a I, IV, V progression, this time in the key of Eb. So our chords are as follows; I: Eb, IV: Ab and V: Bb.

Suggestions: The chords may be a simple I, IV, V progression however the bass line is consistently using the Major 7th note, D, of the Eb Major scale. The blues scale is always a good scale to start messing about with on a progression that only consists of these simple 3 chords however it doesn't work very well here. Mainly due to the Major 7th note that the bass is playing.

This one note that the bass is playing really forces the choice over to the Major sounding scale. It fits a lot better with the music. As we've already seen with suggestions for the other tracks on this website - often we'd start looking at the Major pentatonic scale for this track. However the Major 7th played by the bass gives us an opportunity to use the full Major scale.

That said, have a good play around with the Eb Major scale. All of it!

Guitar tablature for Eb Major in 6th position is shown below. The notes in brackets on the low E (or 6th) string are the 5th and 6th notes of the Eb Major scale. These notes are Bb and C respectively. The note at the 5th fret on the A (or 5th) string is the Major 7th of the Eb Major scale which is the note D. These notes have been put in brackets to highlight where the first (lowest) occurrence of the Root note of the Eb Major scale is. Which is at the 6th fret on the 5th string and is the note Eb.

The notes at the 9th and 10th frets on the 2nd (B) and 1st (high E) strings are showing you that you need to shift positions (i.e. move your hand up the neck of the guitar) so that you can play these notes.

Eb Major Scale in 5th Position

E|----------------------------------------------------6--8--10--11-
B|------------------------------------------6--8--9-----------------
G|--------------------------------5--7--8---------------------------
D|----------------------5--6--8-------------------------------------
A|-----------(5)--6-8-----------------------------------------------
E|--(6)--(8)----------------------------------------------------------

Note: if we said that the Root note of the Eb Major scale was any note other than Eb then we'd have to check if the milk in the refrigerator had gone off and made us start thinking strange things. The Root note of the A Major scale is going to be A. The Root note of the F minor scale is going to be F. The Root note of a scale is where the scale gets the first part of it's name from. The second part of the name of a scale (e.g. Major, minor, Mixolydian) tells us the specific intervals between all the other notes of the scale.

e.g. C Major tells you that the Root note of the scale is C and the notes of the scale follow the intervals that all Major scales are made up of. So the notes will be C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C. C minor tells you that the Root note of the scale is C and the notes of the scale follow the intervals that all Mixolydian scales are made up of. So the notes will be C, D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C. You can see here that the difference between the Major scale and the Mixolydian scale is only one note, the 7th degree of the scale. That one note however, changes the entire sound of the scale you are playing.

I'm not trying to get you to learn the modes or confuse you with a bunch of scales. The point here is to realize that the Root note for any scale gives you a point of reference for any scale.

The Eb Major scale sounds really cool over the IV chord (i.e. the Ab chord). When you want to try something else out - you could play the Ab Major Pentatonic and Bb Major pentatonic scales over the Ab and Bb chords.

Make sure you don't just play the scale up and down like it's written in the guitar tab. Skip notes, strings and use your ear to make it sound musical. The last thing you want to do is play guitar like you are playing scales. There are already trained monkeys who can do that just fine. Millions of them!

You should also move the scale up the neck. If you want to play the Eb Major scale that is shown in 6th position one octave higher up on the guitar then you move the pattern up to the 18th fret of your guitar. If the frets on your guitar don't go higher than the 21st fret then some notes you won't be able to play this high. Or if you are playing an acoustic guitar it may be too hard to reach that part of the fretboard. What you have to do in this type of situation is find where you can play the notes from this scale. I'm not going to give you the guitar tab for everything. This is what older people refer to as work.

Jam on!