Chapter 1 – The Power of Simplicity
The pentatonic scale is one of the most useful tool for playing lead guitar. It’s easy, it sounds great, and can be used in a ton of musical styles, from blues and rock to pop and folk. Its power is in its simplicity and universality. As guitarists, we can use it for speed runs and applying patterns and odd note groupings. But most importantly, we can use the pentatonic scale as a foundation for building larger scales.
If you look at some of the very best players in the world, people like Eric Gales, Mateus Asato, John Mayer, and Derek Trucks, a lot of them, still rely super heavily on the pentatonic scale. It remains a very important foundation. The other good thing about the pentatonic scale is that it is what you hear in vocal runs that R&B singers do oftentimes. And I think vocal runs are some of the most musical stuff when they’re done sensibly.
Chapter 2 – The Minor Pentatonic Scale
The minor pentatonic scale has 5 notes and the note you begin with gives the scale its name. For example, applying the minor pentatonic scale formula and starting on A will give you an A minor pentatonic scale. Similarly, starting on an Eb note will give you an Eb minor pentatonic scale.
The Minor Pentatonic Scale Formula
The scale formula is 1 b3 4 5 b7. Here’s a diagram of the A minor pentatonic scale on the guitar neck.
If you want to know more about scale formulas and how to use them for building and visualizing scales on the fretboard, it’s one of the topics discussed in this free course: Fretboard Visualization – Macro vs Micro.
The 5 Minor Pentatonic Scale Shapes
A great way to memorize the minor pentatonic scale all across the fretboard is to break the scale down into 5 box patterns.
To have a strong foundation for guitar improvisation, we need to know these 5 scale shapes like the back of our hand. Also, take note of where the root notes are in each of these shapes. Practice playing the shapes with a metronome and if possible, record yourself to monitor progress.
Memorizing the scale efficiently using Circle of 4ths
By using the circle of 4ths, you can memorize and practice all of the 5 minor pentatonic scale shapes in just one area of the fretboard. Notice that after 5 key changes, the shapes repeat themselves.
Chapter 3 – Spicin’ Up Your Pentatonic Licks
Beat Subdivisions and Patterns
The key to getting somewhere with this pentatonic scale stuff is to start applying beat subdivisions, patterns, and odd-note groupings. In the example below, I’m using mostly 5-note groupings. I prefer odd-note groupings especially group of fives as they make the pattern not so obvious and they’re easy to play. To me, they just sound more interesting and less predictable. In the example below, I’m showing how you can already do a lot with just one pattern, and make it sound different every time by just switching between different beat subdivisions.
Connecting the Scale Shapes
The real key to getting more out of the pentatonic scale is to have an almost if not seamless way of moving between these shapes. You need to be working on joining these things up so instead of just one box pattern at a time, you could play your pentatonic scale anywhere on the neck.
Below are examples of pentatonic scale runs that span across 3 box patterns.
For an exercise, you can also make your own pentatonic scale runs that span across multiple pentatonic box shapes. Make sure that you see where the root notes are as you play these runs. Again, use a metronome and record yourself to speed up your progress.
Chapter 4 – The 5 Modes of the Minor Pentatonic Scale
As I mentioned earlier, we can use the pentatonic scale as a skeleton or foundation for building larger scales. And when you start thinking about the pentatonic scale in terms of scale degrees, it makes it easier to use them for improvisation or as building blocks for creating other scales.
Minor Pentatonic
The first mode of the minor pentatonic scale is the minor pentatonic scale itself. The scale formula is 1 b3 4 5 b7.
Major Pentatonic
The second mode of the minor pentatonic scale is the major pentatonic scale. The scale formula is 1 2 3 5 6.
Minor4 Pentatonic
The third mode of the minor pentatonic scale is the minor4 pentatonic scale. The scale formula is 1 2 4 5 b7.
Minor5 Pentatonic
The fourth mode of the minor pentatonic scale is the minor5 pentatonic scale. The scale formula is 1 b3 4 5 b6 b7.
Major5 Pentatonic
The fifth mode of the minor pentatonic scale is the major5 pentatonic scale. The scale formula is 1 2 4 5 6.
Melodic Improvisation with Major and Minor Pentatonic Shapes
Let’s take for example a simple 1-2-4-1 chord progression in the key of E. The chord progression goes:
E – F#m – A – E –
So because the one chord is a major chord, we are going to use E major pentatonic (1 2 3 5 6). For 2m, we know it’s a minor chord, so we’re going to use F# minor pentatonic (1 b3 4 5 b7). And then for the 4 chord, which is another major chord, we’re going to use A major pentatonic (1 2 3 5 6).
It’s important to see the chord shapes on the fretboard so we can use them as target notes when improvising with pentatonic scale shapes.
Here’s how to visualize the pentatonic scale shapes on the same position of the fretboard:
Here’s an example of a melodic improvisation using major and minor pentatonic shapes. I added some major and minor blues scales in there as well, but the core melodic foundation is still the pentatonic scale.
An important caveat to make these pentatonic scales sound good over these chords is that sometimes when you land on a chord tone, you need to bend the note up very slightly or apply vibrato just to make it sound right. We need to use our ears to find the microtones.
For example, when playing the minor pentatonic scale over the 2m chord, if you land on the chord tone b3, which is the note A, make sure to bend the note up very slightly or apply vibrato to hit the b3* microtone.
Same thing with the 3rd scale degree of the 1 chord and the root note of the 4 chord. Just bend them up very slightly or again apply vibrato when using them as target notes, and try to hit that sweet spot. It’s very subtle but makes a huge difference to your tonality.
If you want to be able to improvise with these scales anywhere on the fretboard, you can take the Fretboard Visualization – Macro vs Micro course to get familiar with the major scale number system and switching between macro and micro fretboard visualization.
So far, we’ve used only 2 of the 5 modes of the minor pentatonic scale. Just take note of the other 3 modes as you will be using them for visualizing other scales later on in the other courses.
And that’s about it! Hopefully, this helps you break away from the usual box patterns. If this mini course has helped you in any way, please leave a comment or share this to your friends. Thanks for your support and see you soon at the next course!
