Jamming to Money for Nothing

April 18th, 2007

Someday I wish I could honestly say that Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits was an influence in my playing, because he’s just amazing. He doesn’t use a pick, so his tone and lines are a tad difficult for me, so as usual, I went my own way with this one. I kept in mind that Knopfler likes to use Pentatonic string skips and open-string licks, so I incorporated some of that.

A minor pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five pitches per octave, derived by removing the 2nd and 6th notes from the parent minor scale. Using the song Money for Nothing as a reference (which is in G minor), the minor scale is composed of the following notes: G, A, B-flat, C, D, E-flat and F sharp, as illustrated below:

G Minor Scale

The minor pentatonic would then be A, B-flat, C, D and F sharp, and has the following pattern:

Minor Pentatonic Scale

Try this lick slow, and experiment with variants like slides instead of bends, try doing it all in one string, or change the timing. The really great thing about using a pentatonic scale is you can even just do a scale run and add a bend here, a double-stop there, and it won’t sound mechanical.

Pentatonic lick

Try to add a little spice to your licks by playing a C minor pentatonic lick where the song shifts from B-flat to C, instead of playing it in G. A fun thing that I do when I’m stuck in a rut is to shred the full minor scale, going up and down the fretboard; it’s useful in transitions where you want to emphasize a sudden shift in attitude, like say when the song is building to a head, changing time signatures or as an exclamation point.

That’s it for now; try to experiment going up and down that scale :) til next time! \m/

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