LESSON 2 Pentatonic Scales - The Pentatonic Minor Scale Welcome to the pentatonic minor scale lesson. scale lesson. This scale is often called the "blues scale" but we will stay away from that name because many people seem to have different ideas of what is or isn't the blues scale. This scale is a fairly simple introduction to scales and how scales work. It is a very commonly used scale and can be found in many popular songs, especially in classic rock, blues, hard rock, and more. Because this scale is so commonly used it is the perfect scale for you to start with.
Playing The Pentatonic Minor Scale
The pentatonic minor scale is a five ! note scale penta meaning five like in pentagon, and tonic meaning tone. #o a pentatonic scale is a "five tone scale". There are five ! positions to learn in a pentatonic scale. If you do not know what a "position" is refer to the terms page. We will learn all five positions of this scale and where they should be played on your guitar. $irst, we will choose the key that we will play the scale in. $or simplicity, in this course we will learn most scales in the key of %, and then discuss transposing them to different keys later. % pentatonic minor will be the pentatonic minor scale played in the key of %, which means % will be our root note. That means that the whole scale and the way you use it will be centered around the % note. We will cover that in much more detail when we get to "phrasing". $or now, in the diagram below you will see the entire % &entatonic inor scale shown as it will look on your guitar neck bass players would only have the bottom ( strings. The notes you would play are marked with red dots, and the "root notes" % notes are marked as red dots with yellow dots in the center.
Pentatonic Minor - Key Of E This is the full pentatonic minor scale in the key of %. We will break it down into seperate "positions" in the ne)t lesson. *fter that we will move into "phrasing" "phrasing" and start to solo with it, it, or +am some some great walking bass bass lines if you are are a bass player. Five Positions Of The Pentatonic Minor Scale This lesson will cover learning the five positions of pentatonic minor for guitar and bass. Below you will see the full version of the % pentatonic minor scale, showing where each position should be played in % pentatonic minor on the guitar. ou can also see where all of the root notes are on the full diagram of % pentatonic minor.
- ote that the positions overlap, for instance position two is simply the top half of position one mated with the bottom half of position /. *ll of these positions fit together perfectly and will always be in the same order that they are here. That means that they must always be positioned together as they are and their relation to each other will never change. To play this pentatonic minor scale in any key other than %, you would have to slide the whole note diagram up or down the neck, moving all the positions together. This will be covered in the transposing scales lesson. ow that you can see all of the positions and how they work together to form the % pentatonic minor scale, I will show you the individual positions. ou will notice that there are no marks on the notes in the position diagrams to show where the root note is as this is not important for the positions. We will find out why this is when we get to the lesson on transposing.
Position One
Position Two
Position Three
Position Four
Position Five ow we can move on to start learning how to use this in your playing. The ne)t section is on "phrasing" and will teach you how to play this scale with feeling and start improvising with it.
The Art Of Phrasing With Pentatonic Scales &hrasing is the way we will think of how we play the guitar or b ass. Its almost like english class in school, in that we will think of it like the way we speak. *fter all, that is what you want to do with your instrument isn't it0 We will learn to e)press ourselves and our playing using phrasing.
Phrasing terms
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phrase * phrase is a group of scale notes being played together to form a musical "idea".
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perio! phrase * period phrase is a phrase that ends with the root note. This leaves the listener with a sense that the idea is done or complete. It has a "finished" sound.
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comma phrase * comma phrase is a phrase ending in a note other than the root note. This leaves the listener with the feeling there must be something more to come. The idea does not sound "finished" yet.
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phrasing This would simply be the art of phrasing and using both comma and period phrases together to form whole solos, etc.
%ach lick, riff, or melody you play we will call a phrase. #ome phrases are comma phrases and some are period phrases. When we link comma and period phrases together we get ideas that are more complete. #o a whole entire solo would be +ust like a paragraph. 1ots of smaller ideas linked together, using comma and period phrases that kinda make up sentences, and those all put together will kinda make a paragraph or for you a solo. It does not matter what scale note you start a phrase on, only what note the phrase ends with. This all rests on knowing what key you are playing in. To be able to h ear this comma2period phrasing at work much better, you need to hear the root note often. #ay, if you are playing % pentatonic minor scale notes it would help to hear an % minor chord your root fairly often. *lso, playing with a 34 or some song that you know uses your scale would help tremendously. This allows you to hear the way a phrase ending on a root note sounds finished, and a phrase ending on a note other than the root note leaves it sounding like more must be coming. Try it out. If done properly you will hear what I am talking about. Transposing Scales "nto Other Musical Keys 5k, so what happens if you don't want to play pentatonic minor in the key of % 0 Well, now we would have to transpose the scale into another key. Transposing simply means to move our scale, moving all of the positions together, to another key or root note. If you wanted to play * pentatonic minor instead of % pentatonic minor, you would have to move the first position that starts with the low % note up ! frets so that the first note of position 6 is the * note. *ll other positions would have to slide up the neck ! frets also, so that their relation to each other is still the same. aturally, anything that slides up past the octave 67th fret will also appear at the bottom of the neck, as they are the same n otes. If you have already learned % pentatonic minor and you should have if you are here you can study the diagram below and you can see e)actly what I am talking about. 5ur root note will now be *, and thats where the first position will start.
otice that even the root notes are in e)actly the same place in the positions as they were before, the only thing thats changed is we slid the whole thing up ! frets. ou would now be playing "* pentatonic minor".
