Lesson Tag: scale shape

Now that we’ve learned the two most common pentatonic patterns, we connect them for even greater fretboard mobility and additional musical possibilities.

“Double stops” are a great way to diversify your riffs and solos and make them beefier. You can also create miniature patterns, such as a “down-3, back-1” pattern that sound great and that can be started and ended at any place in the pattern.

Now we look at a second pattern for the pentatonic scale. You’ll probably find that this pattern is even easier to play than the first pattern. Each pattern lends itself to certain riffs and licks on the guitar, and presents unique melodic opportunities.

Now we introduce a very important Major Pentatonic Scale pattern. Notice how the Pentatonic Scale is derived from the Major Scale (as so many, many things are). All we do is remove the 4th and 7th degrees from our original Major Scale and Voila! we’re left with 5 notes: The Pentatonic Scale.