Originally posted by chris mood
[B]NTM..the thing that could throw a novice player w/using the Cminor pentover Aminor is that there's no chord tones to resolve the b2 & b5 too...again, if not phrased properly this could sound quite wrong.

b2-3, or Bb to C over a A minor chord. b5 to natural 5, which as I said any unwanted dissonance could be remedied by resolving a half step (up) to a consonant note. Even if you wanted the root, since the minor pent doesn't have a 6th tone. It's not an alteration to just add the 6th tone. This same problem occurs even when you just use I IV and V. Take the V chord and use a blues scale, in the blues scale the 7 is b7. This would cause problems for the V chord, since the b7 is suggesting a minor V chord. The same remedy works for both, which would be to resolve the b7 to 7, or over the V chord, b3-3. This is true in all altered scales.

Jleraan, if someone did come up and say that. I would do the same as chris and help in destroying their guitar. lol it is true there is no such thing as a wrong note. Wrong notes don't occur because of the conflicts between harmony and melody, but instead the melody or harmony individually playing the wrong note.

Playing against the harmony is not playing wrong notes just to play wrong notes. When playing against the harmony, it is very important to choose the right scale for what you want to do. I did not intend this to be suggestive towards a novice musician. Actually I only brought it as an example to Dream that every possible note has been played in a solo (Pg.2).

If you were to play a scale with no note in common with the harmony, say D# pent. minor over C major you would run into phrasing problem out the bunghole. This is why I say you better have a good grip on playing with the harmony before you try to play against it. The reason is you know where to go if you run into a problem. It can be done, but I would definitely agree with chris here, no novice should ever attempt this. 99.9% of the time it will sound completely wrong because of phrasing, and the end result will look more like the chromatic scale rather than the minor pent.

When it comes to playing scales over a harmony, it is important to keep the root the same. Then it becomes more a question of tonality, then phrasing. Although phrasing can still be a problem in some cases, the step-wise resolve corrects such problems.