Piano: Ab Minor Pentatonic Over the Changes

Ab Minor 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.

Gritty, bluesy, and direct — five notes with no half steps, so each one lands with attitude over a minor or dominant chord. The sound of rock and blues lead playing.

Heard in: Blues, rock, hard rock, metal, funk, and soul solos — the first scale most lead players learn and the one they never leave.

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.