Whiskey in the jar- scale confusion

packas

Hi all

Only playing guitar 7-8 months. Having trouble with this song. It's in key of G and as such I'm looking at intro and solo. It seems to follow te pentatonic scale fairly well but there's extra notes there that don't fit the patterns ie it doesn't seem to fit the pentatonic properly. Pentatonic scale is all I know at the moment unfortunately so if it was anything else I wouldn't recognise it. Can anyone help?

Thanks
Pat

18AD

They could just be passing tones. They're basically tones outside the scale that resolve to scale tones. I'm not familiar with the tune though. If you post up a section of tab I can have a gander.
Maybe someone else will know the tune.

Thomas from Presence

It uses the full major scale. You might remember that from tin whistle in school, basically its Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do

The pentatonic is G major pentatonic but the main "theme" at the start is a straight forward major scale.

packas

Thomas from Presence wrote: »

It uses the full major scale. You might remember that from tin whistle in school, basically its Do-Re-Me-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do

The pentatonic is G major pentatonic but the main "theme" at the start is a straight forward major scale.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm only a novice player. So far I've covered the pentatonic scale & am currently working through CAGED chord system and the arpegio's. The major scale is something I'm not too familar with yet. However I did flick ahead in the book I have and the opening riif follows the G Major scale pattern 2 nicely (string 1 fret 8,7 & 5)

Thomas from Presence

It'd be good to get a handle on the major scale early on from a theory point of view.

The way it goes (and this is very rough!)

The major scale is at the root of everything - Whiskey in the jar in is in the key of G which means that all the chords in it (and all the notes in those chords!) and all the melodies are using the notes of G major i.e. G A B C D E F# G

That's what the scale is. G major pentatonic is a way to get a stylised sound out of Gmajor by restricting your work to 5 notes. So it goes G A B D E

If you can learn how the chords in a key come from a scale and then how that applies CAGED and mix that again with what chord symbols mean (min7, sus2, add9 etc.), you would be able to play every chord possible on the guitar and everywhere.

Mix that with scale knowledge and you've got arpeggios that you can use for improvisation as well as target notes for different moods.

Get that in to ya over the next while as well as a good dollop of proper practicing and you'll have an edge on a lot of players"

packas

Trying hard to get at least 20-30 mins in every evening. With 4 kids it aint easy. As a guide my main focus is Desi serna fretboard theory. On top of that I'm getting my hands on As much supplemental info as possible. Thanks for the advice
Thomas!!

Thomas from Presence

You're doing very well to be getting that much time in!

themacman

Just FYI: (hope im not complicating things too much for you)

If you are referring to the Thin Lizzy version, there is also an F chord in there, and as such there are a few F notes in the solo.

This may mean the scale is called something othere than the G-major. But for a non-theory player like myself, I just look at it as the G-major with an F thrown in.

demanufactured

G major/G mixolydian

paligulus1

If this is the Lizzy version, I would skip the intro (the solo part before drums and main riff comes in) when delving into the theory of this song as it is unusually "outside" for Thin Lizzy. The final run has loads of passing tones which can be really confusing when trying to figure out theory. This comes from the fact Eric Bell had a lot of Jazz elements in his playing.

Most Lizzy solos (say Nightlife onwards) use:
The Pentatonic scale.
The Blues Scale.
The Major scale. (can be also referred as Minor scale depending on key - but it is probably simpler to think of as just Major scale).

If you look these up you will have covered most of the theory behind all of Lizzy's solos.

The only other "outside" playing i can think of is the second part of the solo in don't Believe a Word and it is only for 2 bars.

E.g.
All of the lead parts in Boys are back in town are in A major.

All the lead in Waiting For an Alibi uses C#Minor scale (same as Emajor) and the Pentatonic scale (major scale with some notes removed).

All solos in Still In Love With you use A minor (same as Cmajor) and pentatonic.

Cheers,