Jamie Humphries – Power Pentatonics
Jamie Humphries Power Pentatonics
Jamie is well known as a musical educator and guitarist par excellence in the UK – a reputation that is fast spreading to the rest of the world courtesy in part to Lick Library, bolstered by performances with Aussie Floyd and the Champions of Rock. His natural ability (and huge hands) coupled with a studious bent and musicallity are equally well displayed when teaching students or holding down the guitar role in several large productions.
In this informative video Jamie examins several methods of employing the humble pentatonic scale to evoke modal qualities and to break away from the more common-or-garden rock scale choices that so many guitarists are familiar with. Initially he recaps the 5 positions of the minor pentatonic scale, and illustrates the chord choices that he uses for the included jam tracks to demonstrate each scalar principle – this useful overview could equally serve as a brief introduction to the pentatonic scale in it’s basic form. He also briefly mentions his admiration for the CAGED method and it’s clear that the methodology has served him well as he goes on to associate chord shapes with the pentatonic shapes in order to provide fretboard fluidity.
Major Pentatonics are discussed next (which are clearly the same shapes with different roots – position 1 of the minor becomes shape 5 of the major pentatonic etc) and I might as well mention my major gripe with any Lick Library product – the lack of accompanying tablature. I understand the difficulties involved in producing tablature from music who’s rights are owned by other artists but surely a simple .pdf for those videos covering music theory and principles isn’t too much to ask? It’s a major letdown considering the high quality of the other aspects of Lick Library videos.
Jamie once more discusses relevant chord voicings for each position (thanks once more to the CAGED system) before moving onto modal theory and diatonic harmony. After examining this methodology in the key of C and explaining the stacking thirds principle of harmonization he associates the chords produced with the relevant modes. Although I have explained this with brevity in mind Jamie explains the subject very thoroughly and his in-depth explanations account for some of this DVD’s running time.
All this is a prelude and solid theoretical basis for one of the major subjects in the video – superimposing pentatonics in order to create the sound of modes. Note – this is NOT modal pentatonics as understood by many Jazz Guitarist whereby new scales are constructed using the characteristic notes from the modes but rather simply using “standard” pentatonics over the relevant chords to evoke those same tonalities.
Note – this is a very long DVD (3hrs - in my opinion superb value for money) which could be considered heavy going but even for novice players there’s a wealth of information here and should provide study material for months to come. As this DVD is so long that a full review would take up perhaps more space than many people are willing to read I’ll summarise the rest of the content – rest assured it’s all equally well explained and concise.
Explanations of the theoretical mechnanics behind the modal superimposition (and a recitation of the specific forumulae) are followed by altered pentatonic scales (pentatonic with a b5 over a dominant chord a major third below the root of the scale for example) with examples covering major and minor chord types, as well as mixing pentatonic scales over static chords.
Thankfully the relentless theory is interspersed with a few examples of licks and a recap of all the theory involved before the ending of the video and again, my only concern is the lack of accompanying tab or notation because as stated – there’s a lot of material here.
Almost essential as well as very useful and well presented Power Pentatonics does cover some ground that guitarists have trod before in instructional DVD’s but none of them cover the subject in such depth.
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