Piano: Ab Major Pentatonic Over the Changes

Ab Major Pentatonic runs 5 notes to the octave, laid out here across 88 keys with every Ab flagged. Mid-chorus the pattern is not what you need; where the root is when the chord changes underneath you is.

Open, sunny, and hard to play wrong — with no half steps there is nothing to clash, so every note sits comfortably over a major chord. Warm, folksy, and singable.

Heard in: Country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, Southern rock, and countless pop hooks — from "Amazing Grace" to "My Girl".

The right hand takes the line and the left keeps stating the chord under it, which makes a scale at this seat a two-handed problem: the notes have to work against a voicing you are choosing at the same time.

Play it slowly against the audio until it stops being a shape, then put it over two bars of a form and let the chord tones decide which of the notes you actually keep.