I've had Purple Rain in my arsenal of guitar songs I can play for a while, and I feel comfortable playing the end solo as Prince does on the album version, and now I really want to get more feel and extend it through my playing. Listening to some his live stuff, (mainly drawing on the Purple Rain Tour 20 minute stuff) he really gives it some and just extends and extends the solo. I've had a look round on the internet and I can't find what scale(s) are used for the song, I've just been reading tabs for the album version, whilst trying to fiddle around playing by ear, but my indepth knowledge of scales is non-existent, and i find it easiest to just play what's in front of me. Can any of you guys give me the name? I can take that and stick it in my scale-tabbing program and enjoy. Thanks in advance

on a song purple rain you can improvise in b major g minor and b minor blues scale

thanks

Fragmentor said:

The song is in the key of B flat and the most common scale to play over a B major chord is a Bb major scale. You can also always play Bb major penta over the B chord. The most natural scales to play over a G minor chord in a song in the key of Bb is G minor (also called G aelolian). You can also play G harmonic minor and G minor penta with the added blue note (wich is D flat). You may play F mixolydian over the F chord (same notes as Bb major but with F as a root note). Over the Eb chord you can play Eb lydian (same notes as Bb major but Eb as root note). That being said you can use the Bb major scale pretty much over the whole song but you should emphasize different selection of notes depending on the chord you play over.

However you can substitute scales on each chords if you want to get another sound. For example you can mix it up with the Bb minor penta with an added blue note (wich is E). This scale is often called the blues scale. You can also play Bb mixolydian (same scale as Eb major but with Bb as root note) over the Bb chord. You can play Eb mixolydian (same notes as Ab major but with Eb as root note) or Eb minor penta/Eb blues scale over the Eb chord.