Learning the Pentatonic Scale

Thursday, 11th June 2009

Guitar Guide for Beginners Guitar Scales

The most common scale used by guitar players is the pentatonic scale, or referred to as the box position.The pentatonic scale is the easiest to learn and master, and can be found commonly in Rock, Blues, and many other styles of music genres. The pentatonic scale consists of only 5 notes, which we know a major or minor scale consists of 7 notes.

Example:

C major pentatonic:

Here are the notes you would play
C, D, E, G, and A

C minor pentatonic:

These are the notes you would play for a C minor Pentatonic
C, E-flat, F, G, B-flat.

Here is the most common patter for a A minor Pentatonic Scale:

The red dot’s is the root note of the Pentatonic scale that we are playing, which in this example above is A. As you can can see from the example above there are 3 red notes, these are the different octaves of A.

Things to remember when playing the Pentatonic Scale or moving it:

Starting on the 5th fret of the six string will give us the root note of our Pentatonic Scale.
This scale pattern is movable, so if you shift up 2 frets to the 7th fret this would be a C pentatonic scale.
Always use the same pattern or shape like the above example, when your moving the scale to different locations on the neck.
When practicing the pentatonic scale, make sure you start slow and learn the pattern
Once you remember the pattern, then you’ll want to start remembering the names of the notes you are playing in the A minor pentatonic scale, and once you learn for A minor move onto learning the rest of the pentatonic scales for other keys.