Kalle_in_Sweden wrote:

This how my Digital Music Mentor SW analyzed the chords and bass line of your file.
http://www.box.net/shared/4ib7qmaob6
This SW often identifies too many chord changes but the bass line is often very accurate.
/Kalle

Thanks Kalle. Db Pentatonic Minor also fits in that I was doing some semitone bends up to G from F#, and the G shows up on the Scale Generator as the blue note in that scale. The D# passing note is the added major pentatonic note so that makes sense too. Or at least as much sense as any theory does to me.

I spent a long time trying to base my guitar playing on theory.   I have made much better progress since I ignored it and concentrated on what sounds I can hear instead. I still sometimes like to check whether what I do is making sense as theory too and make sure I'm not deluding myself.

The Digital Music Mentor looks interesting - not seen that one before.

Mhh... I remember using a little more notes as only just the scale ones

12bar wrote:

Db minor and E major pentatonic share the same notes, but to me it sounds like E is the key note, so I'd say it's a sort of E major pentatonic.

E is certainly the note I'm starting on and is the note that the repeated "chorus"/hook passages start with. Hmmm.

The major element sounds interesting and convincing as most of the pieces I've done recently that I've liked the sound of most have been major - sliding the patterns down 3 frets from the normal minor key positions. This piece has the same sort of quality of sound as those. I only know they've been major of course because the backing track was labelled with its key. I must have another look at / think about this. Thank you.

fluffly0995 wrote:

12bar is right.  Its In E major. You could label it pentatonic, but I don't think that'd be entirely correct, if we're being picky about theory because of the D# decoration. If it's being used as a passing tone, I'll bet its passing to E, right? That means its acting as a dominant, which in E major would allow the 7th degree of the scale to be sharpened (That gives us D#). Since a pentatonic scale is formed by ditching the fourth and seventh degree, it can't be pentatonic if you are using D#.

But, all that is a music major speaking, as a musician, I have to say that as long as it sounds good, play it! If you don't know exactly why it it works just don't mention it and the listeners won't know the difference, they'll only know that it sounds good.

Good advice there in that final paragraph!

It was the D# that got me thinking about it - and yes it is passing to the E (or briefly from the E going to C#). I'll now put the theory to the back of my mind again - it's been resting happily there for a year or so.

fluffly0995 wrote:

Since a pentatonic scale is formed by ditching the fourth and seventh degree, it can't be pentatonic if you are using D#.

You're right - strictly speaking a pentatonic scale also can't have more than 5 notes...
But for improvising it's a good thing to use it and add the major seventh, leading to E like when used in the dominant seventh chord.

fluffly0995 wrote:

But, all that is a music major speaking, as a musician, I have to say that as long as it sounds good, play it! If you don't know exactly why it it works just don't mention it and the listeners won't know the difference, they'll only know that it sounds good.

BTW I've updated the scale generator a bit, scale notes are now displayed and you can choose between flats and sharps.