Duration: 4:04 · 1080p Stream
Master video playlist mapped. Ready for batch offline download to media/videos/improv101-4-5.mp4.
Here's the shortcut to playing the changes: instead of hunting for each chord's root from scratch, you overlay the chord's target notes right on top of the rectangle and stack. Using the A minor pentatonic scale, you'll map where the A minor and F major triads sit (the same relative shapes wherever the pattern falls), notice which tones the two chords share, and learn to lean on the unshared notes to make the changes obvious to a listener. It's exactly the visualization you'll need for the "Stairway to Heaven" solo in the next lesson.
What follows is this lesson’s section of the Course Guide — you can read it here or in the full guide →
When improvising using a baseline pentatonic scale, one of the most powerful ways to find chord tone targets inside a progression is to learn where the notes of each chord overlay on the pentatonic rectangle and stack.
For now, we will focus on learning the locations of chord tones for the A minor and F major triads in relation to the A minor pentatonic rectangle and stack. This will be everything we will need to improvise over the classic “Stairway to Heaven” outro jam in the next section.
Memorize this: These are the target notes for the A minor and F major triads over the A minor pentatonic scale. It is not necessary to memorize the names of the notes, only the positions of the blue notes relative to the rectangle and stack shapes. Notice that these patterns each differ by exactly one note:
Note that these patterns are a subset of the triad overlay patterns you’ll learn in Module 7.
You should not need to memorize these, but for reference, here are the A minor triad targets overlaid on all five pentatonic patterns:
And here are the F major triad targets overlaid on them:
I find that the trickiest places to reliably hit targets are when the rectangle and stack fall across the warp, so I especially recommend practicing them in those locations.
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