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Pentatonic Scales for Guitar
The pentatonic scale is probably the most widely used scale in many forms of lead guitar including rock, blues and country. So, if you want to play lead guitar then you have to know pentatonic scales inside and out.
Before we get into actual playing though, let’s take a look at what a pentatonic scale is. If you break the word into two parts you get penta and tonic. Penta means five and tonic means notes. So pentatonic scale just means “five note scale”.
Keep this in mind as you work your way through the patterns below. If you start playing a root note and play five notes then the next note will again be a root note.
There are a total of five patterns. I simply call these patterns 1-5. You should start by learning pattern 1. After you have that memorized go on to pattern 2. This will probably take some time so be patient. The payoff is worth it.It’s important to notice that the two patterns overlap. In other words, the notes at the top of pattern 2 are the exact same as the notes at the bottom of pattern 1. You are just playing them with different fingers when you are playing pattern 2.
This is the case with all of these patterns – the bottom of one pattern overlaps the top of the next pattern. And the bottom of pattern 5 overlaps the top of pattern 1 so things start all over again. Pay attention to this! This is an important key to learning these scales more quickly and to understand how they connect to each other.
Pentatonic Scale Diagrams
Pattern 1
Pattern 3
Pattern 4
Pattern 5
Root Notes
Notice the white dots in each pattern. These notes are the root notes of the pattern. The root notes are the “home” notes of a scale. The scale will sound “finished” if you end it on a root note.
Another way of saying this is that the white notes indicate what key you are in. If you want to play the minor pentatonic scale in the key of A then you must make sure that the white notes are “A’s”. If you know that one of the white notes is an A then the rest of them will be A’s as well because of the pattern.
So if you look at pattern 1, you’ll see that the very first note (on the sixth string) is a root note. You can find an A on the fifth fret on the sixth string. So if you wanted to play A minor pentatonic you could use pattern 1 starting at the fifth fret on the sixth string. So you are using an A as your root note.
Tablature for playing all five patterns in A minor pentatonic are included below to help illustrate.
It’s important for you to memorize where these root notes are in each pattern. Not only will they help you to determine which key you are playing in but they will help you quite a bit when you improvise your own solos.
Tab for A Minor Pentatonic Pattern 1
Tab for A Minor Pentatonic Pattern 2
Tab for A Minor Pentatonic Pattern 3
Tab for A Minor Pentatonic Pattern 4
Tab for A Minor Pentatonic Pattern 5
This is the first lesson in a series on the pentatonic scale. Part 2 will show you the best ways to memorize these scales and get the most out of them.
[…] This is part 2 of a series on the pentatonic scale. Part 1 can be found here. […]
Pingback by myOnlineGuitar.com » Pentatonic Scales - Part 2 — November 26, 2007 @ 10:13 pm