Music Instruction 101

Learning the Pentatonic Guitar Scales for Soloing and Lead Guitar

Learning the Pentatonic guitar scales is a must if you want to play any lead guitar or have been trying to and want to improve. These are the most important scales for soloing and coming up with unique riffs for any major form of music.

Starters

There are major and minor pentatonic scales. Each scale consists of 5 notes which differs from most other scles which are generally 7 or more notes. This can be helpful to beginners with less notes to remember and fewer chances to get lost on the neck.

The major and minor pentatonic scales have the exact same shape (positioning and fingering on different strings and frets) , they’re just played at different locations on the neck. It’s advisable that you do know the notes on the first couple of strings to make this a bit easier since the shapes are the easy part, knowing the starting and ending notes is the key to knowing what scale you are and need to be playing.

The Shapes

There are 5 different shapes for the pentatonic first through fifth position. Each shape corresponds to the note from the scale you start with.

EXAMPLE: An A minor pentatonic scale on the 6th string would stat at the 5th fret for an A, then slide up three frets, slide of two frets, slide up two more frets, then finally slide up three frets. These are the 5 notes of the A minor pentatonic scale.

To play the sale in a particular position would mean to start at a different note through out the scale. So for the first position of the A minor pentatonic scale you’d start at the 5th fret on the 6th string. The second position you would start that the second note of that A minor scale. So according to the example above if the first note is the 5th fret on the 6th string the second note is after you slide up 3 frets, being the 8th fret on the 6th string.

I know this can be difficult to visualize images do come in handy when you’re learning the pentatonic guitar scales. For each of the 5 notes in the A minor pentatonic scale there is a different position.

So the positions would start at:

Position 1 – 5th fret of 6th string
Position 2 – 8th fret of 6th string
Position 3 – 10th fret of 6th string
Position 4 – 12th fret of 6th string
Position 5 – 15th fret of 6th string

The shapes themselves will have to be for another lesson since it would be a long drawn out and confusing article if I chose to try and explain each shape. A good Learn To Play Guitar dvd should outline the shapes and stress the importance of not only memorizing the scale(s) and notes on the string but also the require shapes for each position.

The shapes stay the same, it’s just the root notes that are modified to play the different major and minor pentatonic scales. This takes some practice and you should start slow and try to find some backing tracks if possible. Playing these scales over full band tracks is fun and a better way to learn then just sitting there playing it over and over alone.

About the Author

A quality Guitar Lessons program that will teach you the pentatonic scales along with the Guitar Theory needed to go along with it is Learn and Master guitar. It’s a top rated guitar lesson dvd program that includes backing tracks you can practice along with once you feel confident with your scales.

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