Chords for MINOR PENTATONIC KENNY GARRETT LICK

[D] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [Db] What's up everybody my name is Scott Paddock and today we're gonna learn a
minor pentatonic Kenny Garrett lick.
[Eb] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Kenny Garrett is one of my all-time
favorite saxophone players.
I love the way he plays.
I love his own unique style.
He's definitely got his sound that second you hear him you know that it's
him.
He can play a ton of styles from funky stuff with Marcus Miller to
straight ahead as straight ahead as straight ahead can get.
He's just a
killing saxophone player.
Today we're gonna [N] learn one of his licks from the
tune Happy People which is one of my all-time favorite Kenny Garrett albums.
The lick is actually super easy.
It's just based on the minor pentatonic scale
and he plays it after one of his verses _ and then later on in the solo he
develops the whole solo around this lick and the lick is really easy.
Let's take a
listen to him play it. _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ [C] _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ [N] _ _ _ Yeah so it's just one of those perfect examples of it's a
simple lick but the way he phrases it the way he articulates it it makes it
sound so cool and then he takes this lick and later on in the song develops
the entire solo around this lick that he played as a little go-between lick in
between a verse and the chorus.
Before we dive into the tutorial I'd like to
thank Legerre Reads for sponsoring my videos for the month of December.
I'll be
doing eight videos this month and they have sponsored them all and I really
appreciate their support and in each video I have said I have told you guys
what I like about Legerre.
In the first video I told you my favorite thing was
the consistency.
In the second video I told you that I really like using them
with my students and the reason for that is we never have to worry about is it a
good read or is it a bad read.
It's just always a good read with Legerre and then
every five or six months you have to replace it with another good read.
So
today I'd like to tell you one of my other all-time favorite things about
Legerre.
I'm known predominantly as an alto saxophone player but I play
everything.
I play alto, bari, tenor, soprano.
I play it all and I use Legerre
Signers on all of them.
So when I am doubling if I'm playing a gig where I'm
playing alto, soprano, tenor which happens a lot using synthetic reeds and
specifically a Legerre signature makes life so much easier because you don't
have to worry about the read.
You don't have to wet the read.
You don't have to
wonder if the read dried out.
A lot of times when you're doubling that saxophone
will sit there for 20 minutes, 40 minutes, sometimes even hour, hour and a half
before you play it and if you have cane reeds on you have to figure out a way to
get those reeds wet before you play it.
With a synthetic reed every
time you pick it up it just works.
So Legerre Signatures have made my doubling
life so much better.
Okay so let's dive back into the tutorial.
This lick is
based off of the minor pentatonic scale.
So minor meaning we're gonna use a minor
scale.
Pentatonic meaning we're gonna use five notes.
So the scale is 1 flat 3 4
5 flat 7 1 and this lick is in the key of F sharp minor.
So the 1 is F sharp, the
flat third is A, the 4 is B, the 5 is C sharp, the flat 7 is E and the 1 is F
sharp.
So it sounds like this.
[Am] _ _ [D] _ [Em] _ _
[Am] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _
[Ab] So like all of my past videos we are gonna learn the
lick based on scale degrees as opposed to notes.
I'm gonna put the the lick up
below but I'll put the scale degrees above it but we're gonna learn it by
scale degrees because we want to be able to play this lick in other keys and
especially a minor pentatonic lick like this it's gonna be super useful because
you can use it over minor chords, dominant seventh chords and major
chords which I'll tell you that at the end.
I'll tell you how to do that at the
end but right now we are gonna learn this _ lick in the key of F sharp
minor.
_ So it starts on the E of 2 and it's 16th notes for the most part and he
is playing them very articulated and very fat so there's space all around him.
It starts on the 5 which in the key of F sharp minor is a C sharp and it works
its way up to the 5 so it comes in on the [C] E _ _ of 2 and it
goes 5 flat 7 1 flat 3rd 4 5 so in the key of F sharp minor that would be C
sharp E F sharp A B C sharp.
_ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gbm] Now he scoops into that C sharp so we're gonna
go ahead and start doing that from the beginning just because it's a really
integral part of the lick.
It makes it [C] sound really good.
So we're gonna scoop
into that C sharp _ _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ then he works his way back down the scale to the 7 so he
goes from there he goes 4 flat 3 1 flat 7 _ [A] _ _ _ _
[G] _ _ [D] _ [G] _ _ [D] all [Am] together _ [Dm] _ _ _ [G] _ _ [Em] again [D] and _ _ [G] _ _ _ [N]
then he just
finishes it out with F sharp F sharp A which would be 1 1 flat 3 _ _ and _ _ again he
scoops into that last note.
It's a pretty important part of the lick so we are
gonna scoop into that last note from the beginning.
_ _ [Ab] So again that is 1 1 flat
3.
Now what makes this lick sound super cool is he's playing behind the beat
he's articulating really strong and when he gets to those last two notes he plays
two eighth notes which makes the lick feel [Em] like it's kind of getting
behind the time and slowing down so it sounds really cool.
Take a listen to the
whole lick from the beginning.
_ [D] _ _ [Am] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[N] So that's the whole lick.
Again it's a pretty easy
lick to figure out because it's just based on your minor pentatonic scale.
Now
the beauty of a minor pentatonic scale is you can use it on minor chords
dominant seventh chords and major chords.
So on minor chords obviously you would
use it on the root of the minor chord that you're playing.
So if we are playing
this lick in the key of F sharp minor we would play it over F sharp minor seventh
chord but you can also play it over the relative major.
Relative major just means
the major that is in the same key of that minor so they're relatives because
they have the same key signature.
So the relative major of F sharp is A major.
_ So
we could play this lick over _ a seven chord or a major seven chord.
Because
there are no G sharps in the lick it doesn't matter which seventh that we
have so you can play it on dominant seventh or a major seventh.
Now a little
bit more about minor pentatonic licks working on your major scale.
They work
again because they are relative major and minor.
So the minor is the sixth mode
of the major scale.
In other words it's the scale that you play starting on the
sixth note of the major scale.
So if A is your major scale A B C sharp D E F sharp
would be your relative minor.
So that's why we can play this lick in F sharp
minor or A major.
Alright so now we can play this lick in the original key.
Let's
figure it out a half a step up in the key of G.
So we're gonna play it in our
_ G minor pentatonic scale.
So your G minor pentatonic scale would be G B flat
C D [Bbm]
F and G.
_ _ [F] _ _ _ _
_ [Bbm] _ _ _ Now the lick starts on the 5 and it works its way up to the 5.
So in
the key of G the 5 is [Fm] D.
So we're gonna play D F G B flat C and D. _ _
[Bbm] _ [Fm] _ So that's 5
flat 7 1 flat 3 4 5.
_ [Bbm] _
[Fm] _ _ Then it works its [Eb] way back down to the flat 7.
So we go 4 down to the flat 7.
So that'd be C B flat G F which would be 4 flat 3
1 7.
_ _ [Ab] _ _ [Bbm] _ [Ab] _ _
[Fm] _ [Bbm] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Fm] _ _
[Bbm] _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ And then we [Bbm] play 1 1 flat 3. _ _
In the key of G that'd be G G B flat. _ _ _
[Db] So put the
whole lick together.
_ [Bbm] _ _ _
_ _ _ [Gb] Again that's your lick in the key [Fm] of G.
Now when I play
that in the middle of my horn it sounds muddy to me.
So since we're in the key of
G we can take this whole thing up an octave.
_ _ [Gb] _
[Db] _ _ _ [N] And that is your minor pentatonic
Kenny Garrett lick.
This is such a great lick and you can use it in so many
places that I highly recommend learning this in several different keys.
I'd like
to give another shout out to Legere Reads for sponsoring my videos for the
month of December.
I'll be doing eight videos and I really appreciate their
support.
If you have not tried a Legere signature I would strongly suggest it.
Thanks for taking the time to check out this video.
If you now know how to play
the minor pentatonic Kenny Garrett lick I would really appreciate it if you
subscribe to my channel, share with your friends, leave me a comment, and give me
a thumbs up.
[Db] Thanks a [Eb] lot! _ _ _ _ _ _