This lesson goes over the very famous Pentatonic Minor Scale with all of its fingerings. Since 5 notes make up the pentatonic scale, there are 5 fingerings. I suppose we could view these fingerings as Pentatonic Modes, though you don't hear a lot of people talk about them. For this lesson, I have chosen G Minor as the starting point, but you should realize that you could translate these fingerings up and down the neck to achieve the other keys (i.e. shift all fingerings upward by a whole step then we have A Minor Pentatonic as our starting point.)

First, note that the G Major diatonic scale has the notes G Major scale are G, A, B, C, D, E, F#. The notes in the G Minor Pentatonic are G, A#, C, D, E. So, all the 5 notes of the G Minor Pentatonic scale are not in the G Major scale. You have a couple keys to choose from when it comes to playing G Minor Pentatonic scales, but G Major is not one of them. In the Diatonic Scales lesson, I talked about how each mode has a chord type that goes with it. The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th modes go with Minor chords. So, that means for G Minor Pentatonic, you can play that scale in any key whose 2nd, 3rd, or 6th note is G.

You can't talk about the Pentatonic scales without talking about the Blues scale. The Blues scale just adds a 6th note to a pentatonic scale. In the fretboard diagrams for the exercises, I have shown the extra blues note. The diagram is only a suggestion - depending on how your fingers are, you may find adding the blues notes to the scales like I have shown a little awkward.

Ok - enough talk. Just get on with the exercises and email me if you are confused about anything!

If there is one thing that every guitar player should know, then it is the Pentatonic Minor scale. About 90% of what you hear guitar players playing is based on this scale (ok so I grabbed that number out of the air).

Here is the most famous guitar scale of all time. You will have no trouble memorizing this one! The red notes are the actual scale, and the green notes show in addition of the blues notes.

At first, just play the notes shown in red above. When you are comfortable with the basic Pentatonic shape, then start experimenting with the blues notes.

In the previous exercise, we played the G Minor Pentatonic, which starts from G. If we take the 2nd note from that scale, and use it to start the scale, then we end up with the 2nd Pentatonic scale mode.

Here is a not so familiar Pentatonic scale shape. Not symmetric like the Pentatonic Minor!

See exercise 1 for any special instructions.

In this exercise, we continue the idea of Pentatonic modes, and start the scale from the 3rd note of the Pentatonic Minor scale.

Again, we have a Pentatonic shape that is not nearly as symmetrical as the Pentatonic Minor.

See exercise 1 for any special instructions.

We are almost done with out Pentatonic modes. Now we start from the 4th note of the G Pentatonic Minor and end up with the shape below.

With this mode, there is some symmetry reappearing, which should help to make this one memorable.

See exercise 1 for any special instructions.

We have reached the end of the Pentatonic modes. This last mode is also known as the Pentatonic Major.

We see that we again have perfect symmetry, just like we did with the Pentatonic Mode. This is always a bonus when learning scales!

See exercise 1 for any special instructions.

The first guitarist I ever saw play the blues scale using a 3-note-per-string pattern was Paul Gilbert. It is not something you forget as it really is an ingenious approach. So in this guitar lesson I will show you one of endless possibilities for turning this idea into a firey riff. In particular, we will use the A Blues Pentatonic Scale, which has the notes A, C, D, Eb, E, G. The great thing about playing the blues scale 3-notes-per-string is that we can use patterns and ideas that we are already accustomed to in the 3-note-per-string world.

Above is the tab showing how to play this scale using 3 notes per string. The first thing you will notice is that you need to stretch fairly wide to pull this off. Secondly, you have to do a good amount of position shifting, which can be a challenge, especially at higher tempos.

So now go and master this scale shape. After you are comfortable, start experimenting with your own riff ideas. In my recording, I ascended using a simple scalar pattern and then descended using a triplet pattern that is ingrained in my 3-note-per-string scale pattern vocab.

Enjoy!

Brian