Can I play whatever I want within the pentatonic scale when soloing?

Question

I improvise playing the blues on guitar and was wondering one thing. I usually set my keyboard to play the rhythm guitar part, but doing this only lets me have it play one chord unless I manually change it. What I want to do is play along with someone else using the 12 bar progressions. My question is can I play anything in the pentatonic scale as long as it's in the same key without it sounding bad (clashing notes)? An example: If I was playing with the pentatonic scale in E, and my friend was playing a 12 bar rhythm in E (such as E - E - E - E7 - A7 - A7 - E - E- B7- A7 - E - E), could I just go along playing what notes I want, or do I need to be on certain notes at the time to make the chords and solo notes match? (Long question...)

Thanks

Answer 1

Essentially yes, you can play whatever you want within the scale. However, you will find that certain notes suit certain parts of the chord progression better than others, and the only guide to this is your ear. Never be too concerned about playing what's "correct", sometimes something can be technically wrong and sound awesome.

Also, try feeling out extra notes that aren't in the scale that sound good. You probably have a "box pattern" for your pentatonic scale, so just try sharpening and flattening the odd note here and there to see what works - you'll find some interesting ways to add a bit of colour to your solo.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Yes you can play which ever notes you want and nothing will clash. Also try bending the notes to give yourself more options and also play your pentatonic scale up or down one octave,(12 frets higher or lower) again more options. (hey it's only 5 notes.)