Playing fills from relative minor or major

[Argojit]

Hey guys. As I said in the title , I like playing fills from relative minor or major. If the chord is in Dm i play a fill from F major pentatonic scale. Can there be any downsides of this? Doing this and seeing where the 6th is one the lower octave and playing something from it was like a revolution for me . Thanks a lot.

 

[mambo4]

Same notes, so no particular issues, especially if we are talking pentatonic scales.
In fact I would venture to say you are still playing D minor pentatonic, just starting on the 3rd.

seeing where the 6th is on the lower octave and playing something from it was like a revolution for me

No interval is constrained to a lower or higher octave than its root.*
In the key of F the 6th is D, and it can be any D in any octave.

What you have discovered is that a riff or scale needn't begin or end on the root of the chord.

* speaking of intervals of a 7th and below. It gets more nit-picky when you talk about 9th, 11th, 13th...

 

[Mushroo]

@mambo4 nailed it. Here are a few concrete examples of famous songs you probably already know:

If you sing "Happy Birthday" in the key of C Major, it starts on the note G. But it's still in C Major (not G Mixolydian).

If you sing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in the key of C Major, it starts on the note E. But it's still in C Major (not E Phrygian).

If you perform "Beethoven's Fifth Symphony" in the key of C Minor, it starts on the note G. But it's still in C Minor (not G Phrygian).

 

[IamGroot]

The are five pentatonic modes. The most commonly used is the minor pentatonic - 1 b3 4 5 dom7.
Dm pentatonic is D F G A C. If Guitar center collected a penny for every time a minor pentatonic scale (V) was played in their stores, they would be bigger than Amazon.

Now F major Pentatonic is 1 2 3 5 6. F Major Pentatonic is F G A C D. Dm Pentatonic and F Pentatonic have all the same notes but different finger patterns. They are two of the five modes for each pentatonic scale:

I F G A C D ("Major") Works over key of F Major
II G A C D F (theoretically works over G sus)
III A C D F G (wont work over A power chord)
IV C D F G A (Theoretically fits over C sus)
V D F G A C ("Minor")

Modes II, II and IV are commonly used fingering patterns but tending to resolve to the Minor (V) Mode as they don't really have strong chord homes for themselves. For example, Mode II is the riff from "Born Under a Bad Sign" if you add a D at the end. Mode I can stand alone on the major chord..

So learn all 5 fingering patterns which are very similar and where to play them in a given key.

The pentatonic works very well over power "chords" (the 1 and 5 only), and is the soul of blues. Note that when playing pentatonic over the blues, you are using dom 7th chords, not major 7th chords.

In the conventional major /minor diatonic scale there are 7 notes, and you can create 7 different modes chords using the same notes....but that is a different story. But Dminor 7 (Aeolian) and F Maj 7 (Ionion) have congruent scales as well.

The Pentatonic and Diatonic scale systems are separate beings, but we sometimes mix em up, cuz there are no laws in music, just things that sound better or worse.

Hope this helps.

 

[Fergie Fulton]

In every major scale there is a minor and in every minor scale there is major one, as you have discovered.
the notes are the same but the starting point is different.

C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C etc are the notes of a C scale repeating each octave as the climb.
So the Am scale the natural one or relative one starts on the 6th with A. The key signature is the same for both scales used

The harmony is the same it just starts on a different note.
The intervals are the same, just start on a different note, and in all cases that is use to find the relative minor in a Major scale start on the 6th of the Major to find the relative Major in a minor scale start on the 3rd of a minor scale.

This is a basic example of it in its simplest form using relative scales, intervals, keys, and harmony.