How to Use the Pentatonic Scale in your Jazz Piano Improvisation

In this lesson I’ll show you how to use the pentatonic scale in your Jazz piano improvisation.

You can use this 5-note scale over major 7 chords, minor 7 chords, and dominant 7 chords.

In this lesson I'll show you how to play it over each of these three chords:

What is the Pentatonic Scale?

So a pentatonic scale is a five-note scale. Here’s a stack of fifths: C, G, D, A, E, and if we compact those into one octave, that’s what you get. I’m not actually sure if it’s called the pentatonic scale because it’s five notes or because it’s a stack of perfect fifths. It doesn’t really matter, but it’s interesting to know that pattern. It’s just a fifth, a group of fifths, so it’s a very pleasant sound.

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Some people associate it with Oriental music, but it sounds great in jazz piano playing. Because it’s only five notes, it’s quite a simple thing for your brain to have in your mind, and you can come up with licks in the pentatonic scale.

Pentatonic Scale Over Major 7 Chords

Let’s start with a C major 7 chord. When you see a C major 7 chord, you could very simply play a C pentatonic scale. It sounds consonant, sounds fine, but doesn’t sound particularly interesting though because it’s not adding much. It’s really repeating mostly what’s already been played in the left hand.

So it’s got the 1, 3, and the 5; it’s just adding the 9 and the 13. Generally, I should say now, the colorful notes in your improvisations are going to be the extended harmony. So you have the chordal tones 1, 3, 5, 7, and then you have the 9, the 11th, and the 13th. Whether they’re flat 9s, sharp 11s, flat 13s, whatever, it’s always going to be these extended harmony notes that sound really colorful, whatever chord you’re playing.

In my improvisation, I tend to aim for these three notes a fair bit. So playing a C pentatonic over C major 7 isn’t going to give me many of those notes, although actually it is going to give me two, but there are better ways to do this.

The next scale degree we could build it off is the fifth. Play a G pentatonic, and this would be slightly more colorful. It would repeat these chordal tones, the G and the E. The seventh is the more colorful chordal tone, but it would also give me the sixth and the ninth. These are all quite colorful notes.

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For me, the most colorful pentatonic scale for the major 7 chord is if you build it off the second scale degree. So in C major 7, that would be the D. We’ll play a D pentatonic, gives you this lovely sharp 11 and outlines the Lydian mode, which is the major scale with a sharp four.

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That’s a lick I use a lot, it’s actually in one of my ebooks, it’s in “Voodoo Dancer”, it’s in F minor.

Pentatonic Scale Over Minor 7 Chords

What do I do? So basically, the relative major of C minor is E flat major, and for that reason, playing the E flat pentatonic scale sounds consonant. That works fine, but it doesn’t add much color because it’s mainly repeating the chordal tones. Chordal tones are 1, 3, 5, 7. It’s repeating all these chordal tones, and it’s only adding the 11th, which is an F natural. Remember, these are the colorful notes that I tend to aim for in my solos or when I’m composing a melody. So the E flat pentatonic doesn’t add much. You could also do a B flat pentatonic, that would add a bit more.

So that’s quite a good one, but in my opinion and many people’s opinion, an F pentatonic does a nice job. It’s outlining the Dorian mode, it’s got the 9th, 11th, and the 13th, so it’s got all those extended harmony notes, all the colorful notes.

So whenever I see a minor chord, minor 7 chord, and I want to play a pentatonic, I will tend to just play the fourth scale degree pentatonic. So take another example, if we’re in F minor, if I see an F minor 7 chord, I’ll play a B flat pentatonic scale, because that’s the fourth above the root. If it was the key of A minor, if I saw an A minor 7 chord, I’d play the fourth of A, which is D.

Pentatonic Scale Over Dominant 7 Chords

Now onto the last kind of chord: dominant 7 chords. Here’s a C dominant 7: C, E, G, B flat.

What pentatonics could we play? We could play a C pentatonic, but it doesn’t add that much color. We could play a B flat pentatonic, it sounds all right, but here’s what I would play.

I’d probably play an F sharp pentatonic scale, and what does that outline? Well, that outlines a kind of altered harmony, an altered scale you can play over dominant 7 chords. It’s probably as exotic a scale as you can get on a dominant 7 chord.

The exotic notes in the altered scale: you have the root, the third, and the seventh, which are the bland chordal tones. Once you’ve got those, the exotic notes are all these black notes when I’m playing over C dominant 7, and those black notes happen to be a pentatonic scale.

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So for me, when I want to play a pentatonic scale over a dominant 7 chord, I’ll just build a pentatonic scale off the sharp four of the scale. So C dominant 7 means F sharp pentatonic.

Another example: If we had E dominant 7, I’ll build it off the sharp four, which is A# or Bb. It resolves down a fifth which is how the altered scale always wants to resolve.

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Pentatonic Scales Over a 2-5-1 Chord Progression

So let’s start off with a simple pentatonic approach to ii-V-I’s. Let’s practice ii-V-I’s because that’s 90% of jazz is ii-V-I, so it makes sense to practice those most of the time.

We’ve got a 2-5-1 in C major: D minor 7, G dominant 7, C major 7. I’ll just tell you the answer: you can play a G pentatonic and that will sound consonant over all three chords.

So that’s a simple approach to ii-V-I’s: just build a pentatonic scale off the fifth scale degree. The first chord is a minor 7 chord, and I told you a consonant pentatonic scale is built off the fourth of a minor 7 chord. So for the first chord, we’ll play a G pentatonic.

Then we have G dominant 7, the five chord. We could do the sharp four pentatonic, so C sharp or D flat. And then to end with the major 7 chord, I’ll play the D pentatonic. That’s quite a sophisticated sound.

Key Takeaways

In this lesson I showed you how to play the pentatonic scale over 7th chords in your Jazz piano improvisation:

Over major 7 chords, build the pentatonic scale from the 2nd scale degree (e.g. play D pentatonic over C major 7).
Over minor 7 chords, build the pentatonic scale from the sharp 4th scale degree (e.g. play F# pentatonic over C dominant7).
Over dominant 7 chords, build the pentatonic scale from the 4th scale degree (e.g. play F pentatonic over C minor 7).
Over a 2-5-1 chord progression, build the pentatonic scale from the 5th scale degree of the I chord (e.g. play G pentatonic over D minor 7 - G7 - C major 7).

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