The Minor-Pentatonic-Scale - Pattern 1

Difficulty easy
Notes The pentatonic scale is the key to any blues solo playing

Well, the probably most used Scale in improvising is the Pentatonic Scale. The Pentatonic Scale consists only of 5 Tones and it exists in a major and minor type. And in this exercise you become knowledge about the keytones on the fingerboard and which notes you can play in a solo without playing out of tone.

And with the knowledge of these 5 patterns of the Minor-Pentatonic Scale, you can shift them up and down the fingerboard into any other key!

Pentatonic: It´s the oldest scale and consist of five tones. That´s why it´s called Pentatonic (Penta is greek = five)

Basic knowledge: There are 12 whole-tones and semitones on the fingerboard, that means that these notes are repeated from the 13th fret.
(E.g. you have the keytone F on the 1st and 13th fret). The difference between these two notes is called an octave.

1. Notes on the fingerboard.

Notes on the E string

Now you´re ready to learn the five patterns of the Minor-Pentatonic Scale. Each pattern is moveable over the complete fingerboard. E.g. In the keytone G the first pattern starts on the 3rd fret, in the keytone A it starts on the 5th fret, in keytone C on the 8th fret etc.

1st Pattern

Minor Pentatonic Pattern 1
In the keytone G (from the 3rd fret, because the keytone G is on the 3rd fret) the first pattern looks like this.

Practise: Play from the the high E-string to the low E-string and back. Use one finger for each fret. That means Index finger for the 3rd fret in the key of G, the Middle Finger for the 4th fret, the Ringfinger for the 5th fret etc.

Listen to Midi

Pattern Exercise

If you want to move the pattern into another key, just use the graphic above where you can see the keytones on the fingerboard.

Excercise: A simple Pentatonic-Lick (use bendings, hammer-ons as much as you like)

Listen to Midi

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