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Posted

hi ive been in a hole with my guitar knowledge for some time. okay, ill try explaining as best as i can. say someone is playing the chords Emaj, Am, Dm, Am. and now i want to make up a solo to it. which scales would i use and in what keys would i play them in. so for example the first chord E major, would i start playing around in the E major scale, then when A minor hits, i start playing in the A minor scale, then the D minor hits i play with the D minor scale? it sounds wrong when i try. i want to be able to improvise to the chords i record on my computer, but not sound like a douchebag playing the wrong notes, so how do i go about approaching soloing to this rhythm?

Posted

Chord progressions are typically all within a single key. You can build more than one chord out of a single scale (actually, you can build a chord off of every single note in the scale, so that means seven total chords for a single scale/key).

The first challenge is to identify what key the progression is in. Your example is a little tricky, because it's in a minor key, and minor keys can use both natural and harmonic minor scales to create the chords.

First, look at what chords you have and find out which scales have those chords.

Ignore the E major for a moment, and look at the two minor chords. The Am and Dm chords can be found in both the A natural minor and D natural minor scales. Both at first seem like fair game, but the fact that the Am chord is more prevalent in the progression, and when you play the progression, I'm sure the Am chord will sound more like the 'home chord' to you than Dm (Dm will want to return back to the Am chord). This 'home chord' is called the 'tonic,' and the Tonic is also the key, so here it would be Am.

Now, for minor keys, when the V chord is used (the chord built from the 5th scale degree), it is common to switch from the natural minor scale to the harmonic minor scale. There is only one note difference (the seventh note is one fret higher in the harmonic minor scale). The V chord has this note in it. In the natural minor scale, the V chord is Em, but Em doesn't pull that strongly back to Am, but the A harmonic minor scale, which has an E major chord for the V chord, pulls back (resolves) very strongly to Am.

So when playing with the Am and Dm chords, use the A natural minor scale. When you reach the E major chord, switch over to A harmonic minor (the G natural changes to a G#), and then switch back to A natural minor when you leave the E chord and return back to Am.

This is typically how these two scales are used: A natural minor for all the chords in the minor key except for the V chord, and A harmonic minor for the V chord.

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Posted

thanks a lot thats very helpful. but i thought the V of a minor scale is major, so wouldnt you play the major scale? also, when the key changes to E maj, cant i start soloing in the key of E since the chord is E? why does the scale stay in A still, even though the scale was changed from natural to harmonic.

Posted

The key does not change to E major. The key doesn't change at all. The entire progression is in A minor, and when you reach the E chord (which is still in the key of A minor), there is a slight change made to the scale so that you have a G# (the note that makes E major different from E minor).

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Posted

I'll try my best to be helpful but I'm ripped.

Originally posted by Guitarfreak911

but i thought the V of a minor scale is major, so wouldnt you play the major scale?

Well, the natural minor scale has a minor v and the harmonic minor scale has a major V.

Originally posted by Guitarfreak911

why does the scale stay in A still, even though the scale was changed from natural to harmonic.

It's in A minor the whole time, but it borrows temporarily from the A harmonic minor scale when it gets to the E chord. So the parent scale is still in A.

Originally posted by Guitarfreak911

also, when the key changes to E maj, cant i start soloing in the key of E since the chord is E?

Like Poparad said, the key of the song does not change to E.

Now, that said, some people like to play over progressions by treating every chord as a temporary root chord. Isn't that what you mean by switching to E major? Unfortunately it's not as simple as automatically matching the E major scale to an E major triad.

We've already seen that in this instance, the E chord is the V of the A harmonic minor scale. The A harmonic minor scale consists of these notes:
A - 1
B - 2
C - b3
D - 4
E - 5
F - b6
G# - 7
So we reorder the notes with the E as the root chord and we get this scale:
E - 1
F - b2
G# - 3
A - 4
B - 5
C - b6
D - b7
Which is E Phrygian Dominant, the 5th mode of the A harmonic minor scale. So if you wanted, you could play in E phrygian dominant over the E chord, but E major sound off. But don't be afraid to try that anyway, maybe that will sound cool?

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